


Death Takes A Holiday: Masquerades and Viennese Waltzes

by LyraNgalia, rude_not_ginger



Series: Death Takes A Holiday [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aftermath of Violence, Bathroom Sex, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Deductions, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gen, Great Hiatus, Gun Violence, Heist, Manipulation, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Pillow Talk, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-05 09:57:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4175550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leaving behind Sebastian Moran and a trail of bodies in bloody revenge near Niagara Falls, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler make their way to Vienna. But have they truly left all of their enemies behind? Or are their most unshakeable enemies themselves?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Where the Fear has Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Please see [_Death Takes A Holiday: In the Shadow of the Black Mountain_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/694742) for notes/explanations on the peculiarities of this fic's writing style.

_Her lungs burn as she runs, as she gulps in air that is never quite enough, as her heart races and threatens to choke her as it leaps into her throat. She runs, because she is alone and there is nowhere to go, no protection left to bargain for. She runs, and desert sand beneath her feet give way to gravel that threatens to trip her, to cause her to slip. She runs, and gravel gives way to grass and hard-packed dirt, to concrete and asphalt as the city looms up in front of her. She runs, and she knows They are following, the low bass voices, the shouted demands. She is nearly blind as she runs, as buildings loom up in front of her suddenly there is a hand on her wrist, pulling her to the side, into a room that is dark and cool and the sounds of pursuit fade away.  
  
There is smooth, polished wood beneath her feet now, and a moment to breathe, for her heart to stop racing. Still, she fights the hand on her wrist until familiar fingers rest on her pulse point and she recognizes the grip. Her heartbeat pounds in her ears, and it is still too dark in the room to see, but as her terror fades, her eyes adjust and the room begins to take shape.  
  
And as it does, she realizes they are not alone, that there are others waiting, the same bass voices that had been the sounds of her pursuers before, except now the grip at her wrist is an iron shackle, and the room with its polished wood is the train car, and her pursuers who had been faceless before are no longer faceless.  
  
But there is no friendly familiar face, no telltale blue eyes among the terrorists, and the train car fades to rough wood and desert sand beneath her feet again, fades to familiar Karachi and iron shackles and the relentless pain of fists and feet, of iron grips and demanding voices, of the occasional bite of the knife and the inescapable knowledge that she was alone and that no aid would come. _  
  
_Desert sand bites into her knees as she kneels, as the demand comes to give up her phone, as the cameraman pans over the gathered crowd. She sends off a message into the ether, and closes her eyes to wait for the blade to fall. The familiar moan. But instead of blue eyes beneath a dark desert veil there is nothing, just the crunch of metal and plastic as a mobile phone is ground into the sand._  
  
_Nothing but the waiting bite of metal and oblivion. Acceptance gives way to fear and fear claws its painful jagged taloned way up her throat--_  
  
***  
  
She screams.

 

Sherlock actually loathes first class flights. Although his family would always book them for the luxury and the privacy, Sherlock much prefers to be around people. His favorite game of guessing the luggage is useless without the people to observe. In future flights, he promises himself he will book coach, simply for the diversion. Or, at the very least, business class.  
  
The Woman nodded off just over an hour ago. The first class seats have their own privacy borders and seats that can stretch out into beds, as well as televisions with hundreds of immensely boring channels. Despite the leg room, Sherlock has himself curled up on the seat, wrapping his hands around his legs and watching a news program about himself. The fraud Sherlock Holmes. The program has been translated into German, it appears, and the translations of all of the interviews with John are very loose, making it appear as though John doubted Sherlock's abilities. Fairy tales. And some pretty grim ones, too.  
  
The Woman shifts in her sleep, and Sherlock pays it little mind, absorbed in listening to John Watson, even with a terrible translation covering part of his voice. He shouldn't allow himself the nostalgia, the _missing_ of his friend, but he does. It's not until the Woman screams that his attention is off of the interview and on her entirely.  
  
He freezes, as one does, staring at her in bewilderment. Is she dreaming? His mind clicks back into gear. He has seen John have night terrors in the past, but never the Woman. His usual reminders of reality to John would mean nothing to her, and all he can do is sit there for a moment.  
  
He reaches out his arm. "Woman?" he asks, voice easily betraying how startled he feels.

 

 _A hand on her arm, a touch that would become an iron grip, a touch that meant pain and bruises and knives and that utterly inescapable feeling of helplessness..._  
  
Still in the grips of her own mind, her eyes wide but unseeing, she both flinches away from the touch and threatens to claw at his hand with her nails.  
  
" _Don't you dare touch--,_ " she all but snarls.  
  
And it is in mid-snarl that she realizes where she is, that recognition returns to her eyes and she freezes, her gaze taking in the sleek, curved lines of the first class lounge, the pods that cocooned passengers in privacy, the muffled hum of the engines.  
  
'Just a dream,' she tells herself, but she feels herself tremble nonetheless as she closes her hand into a fist, nails digging into her own palm.

 

She flinches away, and then her nails curl, as though she might scratch him. He pulls back, instantly, giving her plenty of space.  
  
Sherlock can't mask the naked emotion on his face. He genuinely has no idea what to do. He doesn't know how he's supposed to react, or what she's expecting of him. He knows that right here, in this moment, goes some sort of sympathetic reaction. He's supposed to make her feel better. He just has no idea how.  
  
"A reaction from seeing your captors," he says. "Perfectly normal."

 

Perfectly normal. _Normal_.  
  
It is hard to say which she loathes more, the idea of having such a painfully _normal_ reaction, or that he sees it.  
  
She forces herself to breathe slowly, focuses on the pain of her nails digging into her palm rather than the terror that still clings to her, that refuses to be dispelled by waking. "My _captors_ ," she corrects, spitting the word out like something foul, "died in Karachi."

 

"All but four, yes," Sherlock agrees. "And now they are, too."  
  
He sees her hand clench, her nails digging into her palm. Should he reach out to take her hand? Should he leave? He thinks he should leave. Give her time away, that must be what she needs. Except that doesn't feel right. She's afraid. He doesn't know how to react to fear on his own, much less if it's someone else. Even less if it's the Woman.  
  
He tries to make his voice soft, caring. "It's all right."

 

It is more than fear. Fear is something to be overcome. Terror of the sort that has caught her in its grasp is more than fear. It is the purest expression of being out of control and, despite the last months of her life in hiding, it is obvious that it is something that she had not overcome.  
  
And if there is one thing Irene Adler loathes, it is being out of control, of knowing there is something she cannot overcome.  
  
Forcing herself to steady breathing does little for her, though drawing her knees up to her chest helps in the most idiotic way. It reminds her that she is whole, that the wounds from Karachi have healed and that time has passed in such a way that the terror should be _gone_.  
  
She doesn't look at him when he speaks, instead staring forward, letting her natural hair, dark and slightly curling, fall like a curtain around her face. "Is that what Dr. Watson's therapist suggests?" she asks. She tries to keep her voice calm, but all she manages is a wavering flatness as she stares at the blank entertainment console in front of her. The dull pain of her nails biting into her palm and she wonders if she will notice if she breaks skin.  
  
A part of her wants the reassurance of touch, of warmth and the solidity that the dream for all its vividness lacked. But to ask for it would be weakness, to admit to being something more vulnerable that she likes to be. To be something other than invulnerable and untouchable.  
  
"Reassure the patient. Let them know they're safe." She glances over at him. "Make sure they don't scratch out the eyes of a flight attendant."

 

She's vulnerable, he can tell that. Even if he doesn't understand, even if he can't reach in and fix what's wrong, he can tell that much. He knows vulnerability, he understands fear. He's felt these things. He reaches over to the small brandy bottle by his table and unscrews the top, offering it to her.  
  
"As if anything John Watson's therapist said was worth anything," he says.

 

She shakes her head, unclenching a hand to wave away the offer of the brandy bottle. The gesture reveals the deep, red crescents of her nails bitten in pale skin, but she has not broken skin yet, at least, at a cursory glance.  
  
She feels too unsteady, too out-of-control already, to drink. To lower her inhibitions now, when she feels utterly on edge... she cannot imagine what she might say.  
  
"I doubt there's enough brandy on this airplane to start down that route."

 

He screws the top back on the bottle, foregoing his own sudden desire to have a drink of the alcohol. His hand is steady as he puts the bottle back down. He can't work out what to do. What would make it right.  
  
He reaches out his hand to take hers, to look down at the crescents cutting into her palm in the same place the chain cut into his.  
  
"What did you dream about?" he inquires. Is this the right path to go for her?

 

She manages to keep herself from clutching at his hand, but there is no hiding the way tension leeches from her shoulders at the touch, no hiding the way the trembling in her fingers slow when faced with the warm solidity of his hand against hers. She hates that weakness. Hates that she _wants_ this, that this _helps._  
  
"Does it matter? Dreams are just random firings of the brain, trying to weave together hallucinations into a narrative."

 

"Irene," he says, voice quiet. "What did they do to you?"  
  
Dreams are a result of trauma. Where his mind can come up with all sorts of trauma that could have been brought about to her, he couldn't read enough of her while they were in Karachi. She hid her fear well, her face was a mask of defiance and pride. And now---  
  
Now, she's hurting because of it.

 

"Hardly matters. They're dead."  
  
That simple knowledge should be reassuring. But it isn't. She pulls her hand from his, drawing farther into the ample seat, curling up into herself. Her fingers tremble again, and she wonders briefly if the brandy would have helped.  
  
She turns away from him, rising out of her seat. "I don't need you to fix this."  
  
She refuses to need him.

 

She turns away, and he's left in a frustrating bubble of not knowing what he should do next. He decides to be straightforward, because that could, in theory, be the best option right now.  
  
"Do you want me to leave you alone?" he asks, simply.

 

The question stops her, stops her turning away, stops her plans to walk away and into the rest of the plane or the lavatory or anywhere else but right _here_.  
  
She wants to say yes. Wants to say that she is _fine_ thank you goodbye Mr. Holmes. But she can't, because it's painfully obvious even to her willful denial that at this moment, being alone does not help, that she shakes and that when she'd had the solidity of his hand against hers, she had not.  
  
She cannot say yes. But she cannot make the simple, single syllable 'no' form on her lips. But he asks, and there has to be an answer. She shakes her head.

 

He is absolutely terrified she's going to not respond at all, at first. He can't make a decision like that on his own. Fortunately, she shakes her head, and he knows what she'd prefer. He also knows it isn't an easy decision, because she rarely stays quiet.  
  
He nods, straightening somewhat in his seat.  
  
"I can't--- _fix_ it, as you say," he says. "But I do want to help. I can't help but feel partially responsible for how you feel."

 

Sometime, when memories of Pakistan do not threaten to choke her like a chain around her throat, when she has wrapped her armour around herself again and convinced herself that this was little more than a dalliance, a meaningless holiday from death, someday she will marvel at his answer now. Someday she will look back on this and be astonished at the sincerity in his words, at the simple statement that admits more about the way they have tangled themselves in each other than anything else they will ever admit.  
  
Today, sitting in the first class seat of a plane bound for Europe, today she cannot dissect his words, cannot accept them for anything more than what she needs because to do more would be to lash out, to rip him to shreds because she knows she is unraveling and cannot admit it.  
  
She is still half-risen, and instead of curling back into her seat, drawing deeper into herself and the knowledge of her own slow unraveling, Irene moves to sit on the edge of his seat. They both tend to draw into themselves when they sit, and there is more than enough space for that in first class.  
  
"I didn't dream about Karachi afterwards," she tells him. "Not once."

 

They both read each other extensively. He reads the way she sits in the chair, the distance she keeps from him and from herself. He thinks about investigating the hound with John, about pushing him away due to self-doubt and fear. That is what this is like, he concludes. She feels the fear he had felt.  
  
"Did you expect to?" he asks. This seems like the right thing to ask.

 

The question earns him a Look, as if the answer to the question is obvious. As if the question itself was too obvious to even contemplate asking. It was a look he was probably more familiar with giving than receiving.

"You're playing therapist. You don't play useless well," she tells him. She looks down at her hand, tracing the lines of fading red crescents in her palm. Pain. Control.

 

"Ordinary people do. Have dreams after," her voice is disdainful, mocking. It says, perhaps, more about her disdain for her own visible weakness than it says about her opinion on what ordinary people experienced. "Trauma."

 

"Yes, well, you're hardly ordinary," he says.  
  
He can't play therapist, and he's fairly certain being himself won't even be remotely helpful in this situation. All the same, he can't do anything but _try_ to help, at least.  
  
"For you to consider it trauma," he adds. "There was significantly more than simply an execution block."

 

A snort of laughter at that. They were being painfully ordinary right now, she thinks. Painful being the operative word. No doubt the other passengers thought so. The nervous woman woken screaming from sleep, nightmare, obvious, now being quietly consoled by her husband, judging by the diamond ring still on her left hand that she had not yet removed.

The fact that no simple couple would dream of things like terrorists and near-executions is inconsequential.

"You keep trying to figure out what happened in Karachi," she says with wry dark humour. She rests her arms on her knees and shrugs. Her eyes follow the pattern of the upholstery of the seat before she looks up at him. "Why?"

Perhaps for the same reason she's avoiding answering.

 

"Because I don't know," he says. "Which is rare for me, if you remember."  
  
He doesn't move in to touch her again, doesn't know what he'd do if he could. He hates not knowing. Not knowing what to do, not knowing what to say, not knowing what happened.  
  
"I only knew part of what caused the trauma for John," he admits. "I worked out the rest later. But you, I---we've been together for months now, and I still don't know. I was _there_ and I still don't know."

 

"If it were the experience that had been traumatic, logically I would have dreamed of it afterwards, rather than just now," she tells him. She looks down at her hands, turning her palm away to hide the fading bite of her nails, the solidity and tug of pain that makes everything so starkly obvious.

A part of her wonders what she would do if their positions were reversed. If she would still be here, or if she would walk away. If he would even admit to wanting her here. It is an uncomfortable thought, and one she wanted to visit only marginally more than his question.

"Would knowing change anything? Rather difficult to exact revenge when everyone involved is dead."

 

"It wouldn't," he admits. "However, in my time, I have found for some simply talking about a situation makes things marginally better. That is, after all, why other people have therapists."  
  
Normal people. Ordinary people. They are the antithesis of everything that is normal, he thinks. Even in moments like this, he is stunned by how difficult it is. He thinks of the couple comforting each other in the morgue on Christmas Day, while he was smoking with Mycroft and thinking about the Woman. They knew what to say to each other to comfort the other. Sherlock sits next to the Woman and is incapable of knowing what to say, or even how to react.  
  
He considers empathizing. This can help.  
  
"I found the act of being dead was easier when it was shared," he offers.

 

She nearly scoffs at his suggestion, because they are so utterly unlike ordinary people that the very idea is almost insulting. But they too make each other ordinary. He came for her in Hong Kong, and she would have hunted Moran down if he had been killed.  
  
Love is too simple, too obvious, too _ordinary_ to describe how they have ensnared each other in their orbits. But if they are made ordinary by each other, reduced to sentiment and predictability... Perhaps love in and of itself is too simplistic a definition, but certainly it seems that it can be a component.  
  
"And here I thought that was simply because the company was better."  
  
But he doesn't love her, and she won't love him. And they are too stubborn, too willful, too _themselves_ to change that.  
  
She studies him, because Sherlock Holmes is far more interesting than her own mental state, than her own memories and the fear of unravelling, of being undone.  
  
Something in his expression decides it for her, a furrowing of his brow, perhaps, the realization that he is _trying_ , that this is beyond advantage and weakness. She draws a slow, steadying breath, closing her eyes. Her voice is low, barely audible, when she speaks.  
  
"Give me your hand."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to all of our faithful readers who've been waiting for the new installment, and it hadn't come on time. Lyra's been having a bit of A Time, which has led to some less-than-prompt editing. But hopefully the new installment was worth waiting for. And as always, thank you for staying with us for so long! It's always a pleasure to hear when our readers have enjoyed this little adventure as much as we have.


	2. Only We Will Remain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the visceral fear of her night terrors fade, Irene Adler finds herself caught in the most vulnerable sort of intimacy with Sherlock Holmes, and a long-simmering plan of his is revealed.

His brows furrow, but Sherlock offers her his hand when it's asked for. He still wears the wedding band, because removing it might've brought question to why they were together, with her wearing her engagement ring. It's a simple way to ensure that they're not questioned as being together, and it makes sense. It certainly has nothing to do with sentiment.  
  
Her eyes are shut, so he moves his hand to lay atop hers.  
  
"The company is certainly appreciated," he says. An understatement, especially considering he's said on more than one occasion that he prefers it to being alone. She is preferable to most people, in fact. Not that she needs reminding.

 

Irene is almost surprised when she feels his hand rest on hers, and there is a brief moment of irritation when she realizes how she had both expected him to agree and that it _helps_. That it is more than simple solidity, more than just having a touchstone against the vividness of night terrors. It helps because it is _him_ and he has already burrowed far too deep beneath her skin, has entangled himself far too much with her.  
  
She takes his hand, her fingertips lingering against the smooth cool band that still sits on his finger, and guides his hand towards her side, running his fingertips against one rib, its position obvious even over the bodice of her dress. Bruised rib in Karachi, long healed. Along that same side, she draws his hand on a diagonal path from just beneath her breast, nearly to her waist. There is still a faint scar on her skin of that particular injury. Knife wound, shallow but painful.  
  
She opens her eyes then, letting herself see the curved space around them, the lines of the first class seats, reminding herself that they are as far as they can be from Pakistan, from her short but brutal captivity. She doesn't tell him what happened in Karachi, but she answers the question all the same.  
  
Clavicle. Bruises there. Throat. Fingers against her windpipe. Arms, fingers, wrist. Bruises, cuts, shackles. They'd kept clear of her face, no doubt to keep her recognizable in the video to Jim. She can give him a full tally, but instead she stops, resting his hand at her waist, against one of the multitudes of bruises that had long since healed, and lets go.   
  
She isn't certain it helps for him to know. But the company helps. "I might say the same."

 

He follows her touch, at first not understanding the gesture, but quickly recognizing the placement of her touches to where small imperfections have appeared on her naked skin. He deduces what would go where based on the placement, what must've been a bruise or a break, and what was probably a cut or a stab. She's showing him rather than telling him.  
  
It is, oddly enough, so very _her_. She's giving him what he asked for, but doing it in such a way that he has to earn the knowledge. Very _her_.  
  
"They're all gone now," he says, simply. "Jim. Everyone he hired in Karachi. Only you and I know the truth."

 

A quiet laugh at that, just a single puff of air. She shakes her head, searching for words. It should be no surprise to her that despite his brilliance, the finer subtleties of emotion escape Sherlock Holmes.   
  
"It isn't about them," she corrects him, running her thumb against her palm, tracing the fading marks of her own fingernails dug into the skin. She doesn't look at him as she continues, "You've never been helpless, Sherlock. Never known for certain that you had nowhere left to turn, that all the protection you'd collected had evaporated and there was nothing left to bargain with."  
  
It had not been the terrorists themselves who had triggered the fear in her, though they had given her mind the memories with which to paint her nightmares, but the unexpected, unasked for, necessity of seeing them again, a decision made by his choice rather than hers.  
  
And Irene Adler never did well out of control.

 

"No," he agrees. "Jim was the closest to that for me, but I still had a plan."  
  
He could easily tell her that it's her fault. And, if he's perfectly honest, it partially is. She set herself up with all of her misbehavior, she put herself in danger. But---it _isn't_. Whatever her transgressions, they weren't worth her life. Whatever she did to him before that night in Karachi, Sherlock Holmes didn't want a world out there without Irene Adler in it.  
  
"That's what Jim's network will give you," he says. "Protection. Power. The knowledge that the helplessness you felt will never happen again."

 

This time she _does_ look up at him, does smile wryly. She feels distinctly vulnerable at the moment, a part of her that realizes she is giving him far too much power over her with this knowledge.   
  
"Obvious now, isn't it? Why I'd have run for Moscow if you'd started destroying it again if Moran hadn't been cooperative."

 

"Gone for the map," he says, nodding. "I'd have beaten you there, you know."  
  
He probably wouldn't have, but it feels nice to say, and he smiles at her. She'd have made a fantastic nemesis, really. Someone who could really fight back, who knew how to beat him.  
  
He takes a breath. "Let me just give it to you instead."

 

She frowns at that, and it is almost visible how her defenses draw back up, walling away the momentary vulnerability she'd shown. In her mind, there is a distinct difference between gaining Moriarty's network through her own machinations (despite his ~~obvious help~~ reluctant acceptance) and the map being offered to her.  
  
The difference between Irene Adler depending on others to give protection that had led to her near beheading in Karachi, and Irene Adler taking what she wanted to ensure she'd never have to depend on that protection again.  
  
"Don't play the hero, Mr. Holmes. Like you said, they don't exist." She draws away from him again. "I don't _need_ you, or your gifts."

 

At least he can say he's been with Irene Adler long enough to be able to see when he's said something wrong. He can see the vulnerability drain out of her as she throws her walls back up. She doesn't want to be given the map, she thinks he's insulting her.  
  
Of course she is. He grits his teeth. This is very _her_ , as well.  
  
Where his hand was touching her waist, he moves it aside. Pulls up his own walls in defense.  
  
"And if heroes did exist, we both know I wouldn't be one of them," he says.

 

She studies him for a long moment and scoffs, rising from where'd she'd been sitting on his seat to turn back to her own.

"If you really believe that, then tell me why you still play the hero."

 

"Wanting to protect one person doesn't make you a hero," he says. "It makes you selfish."  
  
Which says an enormous amount about him and his feelings towards the Woman, he realizes. He wishes he could take back the words the moment they leave his mouth.

 

She pulls away and he pushes. She pushes and he pulls away. It is almost clockwork how it happens, how they cannot abide connecting for more than scant seconds, but that they refuse to allow the other to pull away too far.  
  
At his words, she stops, half risen, and the vulnerability is there again, visible behind the half built-up walls of her defenses. Her fingers tremble, but she curls them back into a fist, hiding them, holding herself together.   
  
"You don't love me," she reminds him quietly. "And I don't need you. Or your protection."  
  
She wishes she were certain she wasn't lying.

 

"You're right," he agrees. "But the world would be significantly less without Irene Adler in it. And I don't want that."  
  
Selfish. She's one of the only people in the world who matters to him.  
  
"John Watson was wrong, you know," he says. "Your death---your assumed death at Christmas didn't break my heart. But it did...upset me. And again in Nassau. I would rather never feel that again."

 

She doesn't move back to her seat, instead sinking back down to sit on the edge of his, as if he has somehow managed to deflate, to leech away her irritation and defense against him.  
  
This is dangerous, she knows, because he has already made himself utterly integral to her, that she does not want a world to exist without both Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes in it. She thinks that John Watson might have been wrong about some things, but that he was utterly correct in his assessment that Sherlock Holmes will always want the last word.   
  
Though this particular punchline seemed more commentary on the world than on them. Or perhaps they were the punchline to the world's perception of what sentiment really was.   
  
"Are you trying to manipulate me?" she asks with a faint smile in her voice. "That if I don't want your utterly self-serving protection that I should endeavor to behave myself and stay out of harm's way?"

 

"No," he says, voice low. He turns his body towards hers. "I would never want you to _behave_."  
  
He reaches out to touch the side of her cheek. A cautious but sentimental gesture. He may regret it later, but the contact seems essential now.

 

She could turn away, could flinch from the touch, but she doesn't, because at the moment it feels right, it feels _necessary_. And the touch of his hand against her cheek, his fingers warm and familiar, feels far more intimate than it should. Her eyes close momentarily, and she reaches up, her fingertips resting lightly against the inside of his wrist.  
  
"Good. Because you'll have to try harder than that to get what you want." Her tone, like the simple touch, is far softer, far less demanding and arch, than her words would have called for.

 

His pulse is only slightly elevated from the anxiety of the situation. He's not sexually aroused right now. The intimacy of this, it isn't sex. It's them, communicating about their emotions. In a way, that makes it more frightening. He can understand the chemistry of sex, but emotions--- _sentiment_ \---makes things messy.  
  
"The question is, what do you think I want?"

 

The gesture isn't about what she'll find, isn't about the mildly elevated pulse beating beneath her fingertips, but about the fact that she reaches for it and he does not hide it. It is the _allowance_ that matters, the knowledge that both of them are fully capable of turning away and neither does. It is intimacy that they rarely manage, that they mutually hide from in intelligence and anger and sex rather than in this.  
  
It is a terrifying thought.  
  
She lets go, and her eyes are clear as she meets his, clear and pale and seeing far more than anyone else in the world, except him.   
  
"I think for once we want the exact same thing. A holiday before the world realizes how thoroughly it's been fooled."

 

His lips upturn into a smile. Not much of one, but very genuine nonetheless.  
  
"Must be quite the talent," he says. "Knowing what others want before they're even certain themselves."

 

This won't last. These little moments of connectivity never do. She expects they'll be snide and sniping again before the plane touches down in Vienna. And that in itself is a rather comforting thought.  
  
Still, she smiles. "About on par with knowing the minutiae of the flight attendant's life at a glance, I'd wager."

 

"Oh, you mean our Vicodin addict?" he inquires, glancing over the partition. The attendant hasn't reappeared, which is for the best. "Simple observation, Woman. You know that."  
  
And yet she is his blind spot. He has never been able to read her, not fully.  
  
"What people like and want is mental. I've never been a mind-reader."

 

Her smile grows a little more at his answer. "Insinuating that I _am_ a mind reader, Mr. Holmes?" she asks. "I should be flattered."  
  
She doesn't tell him that knowing what people liked was as much observation as his deductions, though instead of observing the individual, it required observing and knowing human behaviour in a more general sense, of recognizing how people fit into the world around them and how those things gave away what they wanted and how to use it.   
  
He turns to watch for said flight attendant, and she shifts, her arm brushing against him. "You're expecting she's in the lavatory for another hit."

 

"My deduction," he agrees with a nod. He turns back to her, pleased at the comfortable deductions they can share. She understands his mind like no one else.  
  
He feels like he should hold her. Let her lie against him and remind her that she's not alone, all the while reminding himself that she's safe. It's sentimental, of course, and more than a little silly. She's fine, she's right there. Physical contact won't fix that.  
  
He nods to the television that has turned over to advertisements. "John Watson's been quite vocal on news stations."

 

At his nod, she frowns and turns towards the small television screen. She shifts, to a steadier position, sharing his seat, and the move brings her closer to him. As much as she hates to admit it, proximity helps. Physical contact even more so, but she will not ask for it, and instead contents herself with the feel of him close enough that the radiant heat from their bodies takes the very edge off the chill of the plane.  
  
"Telling his story and clearing your name, in his mind," she says noncommittally. "Does he realize he's being creatively edited?"

 

"No," he says. "I imagine these are old, and once they've come out, he'll step away from the public eye even more."  
  
Sherlock wishes he could've told John. Could've taken away the pain that it's obvious John feels. He simply wasn't aware that John would be so affected. He didn't realize it until the blog started being updated, and he could see John crying at his grave.  
  
"I need to prove that Jim Moriarty was real before I can go back," he says. "That Rich Brook never existed."

 

She draws her knees up, rests her arms around them as an annoyingly bright, idiotic advertisement dances its way across the screen. She reminds herself that he _has_ to return to London, because Sherlock Holmes would not be Sherlock Holmes without Baker Street, because they are utterly rubbish together and if he didn't go back to London they might actually kill each other.  
  
She focuses on the puzzle instead. "I'd suggest using Moran as proof," she says lightly, glancing over her shoulder at him, a lock of hair falling into her face. "But then there's no guarantee I'd ever get him back in useful pieces."

 

"No, and the public won't listen to the story of the spider in the web," he says. "I attempted that one. I simply have to show Jim Moriarty as Jim Moriarty. Killer rather than mastermind."  
  
He reaches out to touch her shoulder, letting his fingers hover for a moment before he retracts. No, he shouldn't be sentimental.  
  
"And Moran would be too likely to talk about you," he says.

 

He hesitates, withdraws. In response, she turns back to the screen, tucking the lock of loose hair behind her ear. "Difficult, given most of the people that Jim Moriarty wanted dead are _dead_ ," she says dryly.   
  
A pause as the idea comes to her mind and it is so simple, so _obvious_ that she turns back to him to watch him, to study his face to see if he had already thought of it, if he had been leading her up to it. "Except us."

 

"Yes," he agrees.  
  
It's interesting, watching the proverbial light bulb appear over her head.

 

Her eyes narrow as she studies him, as he watches her. He isn't surprised, which confirms her suspicions that he knows exactly what he had been driving at with his seemingly offhand comment. But her irritation is tempered by the implication, and the faintest smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.  
  
"Just how many people are you trying to raise from the dead, Mr. Holmes?"

 

He offers a short shrug.  
  
"As many as need be," he says. "And it wouldn't be awful to have you back in London on occasion. For dinner."  
  
Selfish, of course. But he doesn't properly care right now.

 

She allows the smile then, and the realization of how well he's managed to play her, to manipulate her with seemingly off-hand comments... It is masterfully done, and she cannot help the warm shiver that runs up her spine once she realizes it.  
  
She draws closer to him, leaning in until she is a mere half-inch from his ear. "I would have you right here until the economy class hears you begging for mercy."

 

Ah, but despite the sentiment, he does know how to pull a few strings. And the Woman, her mind far more stimulated by mental activities than anything physical, reacts with her warm breath against his ear, sending shock waves down his spine.  
  
He turns his head, just brushing her mouth with his.  
  
"That's the second time you've promised to have me on a plane," he replies. "Eventually I should take you up on the offer."

 

The brush of his mouth against hers is almost frustratingly light, and she responds by catching his lower lip between her teeth with a sharp nip.   
  
"Or right now," she all but purrs. "Your Vicodin-addicted flight attendant isn't in the lavatory like you think she is."

 

The bite is full of desire, and he doesn't need to be the Woman to see what she wants.  
  
His eyebrows go up. "Doesn't seem like an enormous amount of space," he says. "Not that it's any less than the front seat of a car."  
  
Dreadfully irresponsible, but the tone of her voice makes him not even remotely care. He wants her.

 

From Irene's cursory glance around the boarding area before their flight, she knows there are at least three people on their flight who would consider what she is proposing. One of them, a balding businessman with a taste for women's lingerie, has already been rejected by the addict attendant. The other two were tucked away elsewhere, likely in economy, hardly to be considered.   
  
"Hesitating?" she challenges, running her fingers along his side as she draws back, nods towards the front of the plane, where the indicator light shows the lavatories standing empty just behind the cockpit doors. "Or do you _need_ something more spacious?"

 

"I don't hesitate," he replies. Which is utter _bunk_ , really, but he already knows she's aware of that.  
  
He pulls himself to his feet and gives her a small smile before heading towards the lavatories.


	3. The Shrine of Lies (Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Sherlock Holmes reveals that he plans to prove Moriarty's existence and resurrect more than just himself from the dead, he discovers that Irene Adler does not take kindly to being manipulated...

Sherlock heads for the lavatories and Irene waits long enough to have a quiet word with the flight attendant, long enough to make him wonder if she would follow, before rising and heading for the lavatories herself.  
  
She barely manages to close the door behind herself before she presses him against the bulkhead.

 

He steps into the small toilet, looking around. Shame, being able to see so much in such a small room. Unpleasantries, as well as the obviousness that they're not the first to have some sort of a liaison in this room. He turns back after a moment, feeling a slight jab of concern. Had he read her insinuations wrong? Was she mocking him?  
  
Suddenly, the door is opened, shut, and the Woman is up against him, pushing his back against the bulkhead. He lets out a quiet noise in the back of his throat before leaning in to press his mouth to hers.

 

He presses his mouth to hers, and her lips are quick and soft and demanding against his. It is what makes them uniquely themselves, makes them extraordinary despite the moments of almost painfully mundane sentiment they find themselves falling into.  
  
Because it is the intellect, the mental play, that stimulates, that makes her pulse race, that makes her tangle a hand into his hair, to grip the back of his head tight as she deepens the kiss with almost bruising intensity. "You're learning," she tells him between kisses. "But I'm still better."

 

"At this," he agrees, putting a hand to her hip to guide her against him. "And I wouldn't want you to be anything but."  
  
He moves his mouth down, equally sucking and nipping on the sensitive flesh of her neck. This entire situation shouldn't be anything but silly and claustrophobic. After all, they are in a _toilet_ in the sky with no room, and he can still smell the cigarette of the last person sneaking in here. But instead of claustrophobic, he's aroused by her passion and intensity, and by how very dangerous it would be if they were to get caught.  
  
Such a strange leap from where they had been in their seats, her shaking from fear.

 

She wants to tell him that she means at other things, that while he shouldn't get any _ideas_ about how much he thinks he may be able to manipulate her to get what he wants, she is still better at that. But he is nipping at the sensitive skin at her throat, alternating between the harsh draw of teeth and sucking mouth and her attempts to answer him with anything more than a low, approving hum becomes far less interesting the longer she allows his mouth to linger.  
  
And she has no plans to pull him away anytime soon, not with the way her grip against the back of his head holds him there, and she arches into the feel of his hand against her hip, pressing herself against him, effectively pinning him between her and the bulkhead as she reaches over to fumble the lock shut on the door to the lavatory.  
  
It is the play that sparks the fire under her skin, the mind and the words, but there is something else growing now, the intensity of the physical, the cramped confines and the threat of discovery, the desire for physical connectivity and comfort despite her own insistence that she does not need or want it.  
  
She swallows back a moan as the lock clicks into place, and she frees her hand to leave lingering touches and dig furrows with her nails against his side.

 

He could fight against where he's pinned, but there's no point in it. He _likes_ being pinned like this by the Woman. Any other person on the planet and he'd fight back. With her, he embraces it. Her body against his, her quiet moans in his ear, her nails against his side. It's this that he _likes_ , and she knows it.  
  
He moves his head to press his mouth to hers again, to silence her moans in his own mouth. He traces his hand down her chest, moving to cup one of her breasts.

 

With him, she is demanding in a way that her clients and even her occasional lovers do not see. With them she is always untouchable, her demands and her affections edged with cold like silver, every touch with calculation and manipulation. With him, there is an intensity and an abandon in her caresses and her pain. That is not to say that she does not calculate around him, far from it; with them manipulation is art and play, and she uses what she knows he likes to her every advantage.  
  
It is simply that with him her demands are tangled with her desires, and her desires with the knowledge of his in a heady Gordian knot that defies logic and deduction.  
  
His mouth presses against hers, his hand cupping her breast. She smiles against his lips and untangles her hand from his hair to rest her hand on his, guiding his movement with her fingers until she's pulled the dress and bra away. With a wicked deliberateness, she shifts her hips to rub against his front as her own fingers tweak the bared nipple. As she does, she moans against his mouth, as if daring him to muffle the sound as she grinds against him.

 

For someone he so often mentally relates to a statue---cold and calculating in every way that is attractive imaginable---she has so many places that are surprisingly soft and warm. His hand on her breast is a reminder of that. The feminine, the soft, the untouchable, and she's guiding his touch, showing him how she wants to be touched.  
  
She moans, and he doesn't bother to silence her. She grinds against his erection and he only responds with a return low growl in the back of his throat. When he muffles her moan with another kiss, it's because he _must_ kiss her.  
  
She's not only surprising in how soft and warm she can be, but she also peels away the layers of cold and calculating that he has up as well.

 

His growl against her mouth reverberates under her skin, and she is reminded of what other places his mouth could be at that precise moment, and liquid desire slides down her spine and pools in the pit of her stomach. At the moment, she wants nothing more than to force him to his knees, but she knows how much _he_ enjoys being there, how much he _likes_ trying to undo her, to shatter her control, with nothing but his lips and tongue.  
  
And she cannot have _that_.  
  
No doubt it was another one of those dilemmas that would, if voiced, make him wonder if there was something wrong with them, that even in moments like this she resists giving in even as her body would like nothing more.  
  
It is how they are best. Intellectual challenge twined with physical desire. Heat and passion shot through with cold calculation. To be anything less would be dreadfully boring.  
  
She lets go of his hand, no longer guiding, but hooking her fingers into the belt loops of his trousers to pull him with her as she steps backwards. It is a single step to the other side of the tiny lavatory, to the narrow ledge that contained the sink and over it a mirror. She continues kissing him, deepening the kiss to taste him, missing the bitter bite of nicotine that had become familiar, but their travel arrangements had hardly left time for a cigarette, as her fingers leave his belt and begin undoing his trousers.  
  
She wants him, yes, but at the same time she wants to make him quiver for her, as much as she knows she will for him.

 

He can see himself in the surprisingly large mirror above the sink. He can see the lavatory over his shoulder, read out the different things that have happened in here, besides the obvious. He turns his gaze back to the Woman, to the one person he can't read, in order to make his mind silent.  
  
Her clever fingers are undoing his trousers, and he simply stands there, watching her, focusing on her. After a moment, he leans his head down to press his mouth to her throat, a simple kiss. And again, a little above her collarbone.

 

Her pulse is elevated beneath his lips, the telltale heartbeat fluttering quick and erratic beneath her skin. There is no point in pulling away, no need to hide it. Instead, she arches into the simple kiss, body language wanting, as her hands unzip his trousers, her fingertips reaching in to stroke him with knowing, demanding fingers.

 

He moans at her touch. There is something decidedly sexy about this, about the need and the want. No time for waiting, no time for extensive foreplay. No, they need each other, and will take each other now.  
  
It's rather brilliant.  
  
He lowers his hands to the hem of her dress, pushing it up over her hips.  
  
He smirks. "Hardly the most sanitary of locations, Woman," he says.

 

His moan is already settling under her skin like an ember to dry tinder, and she lets go of his side, her nails no longer biting, digging against layers of cloth. He pushes her dress over her hips and in the same move she slips her knickers off, slipping them into the pocket of his undone trousers.  
  
It surprises her, a little, how _different_ each time they have come together is. How they find ways to intrigue and seduce each other. How sometimes it will be the result of days of exhaustion and others there will only need to be a word.  
  
She pulls him to her, her head leaning back against the smooth coolness of the mirror, and strokes him again with a speculative curve to her lips.  
  
"If you're bothered, I can stop right now."

 

He lets out a gasp as she runs her fingers along his erection. Nerves that were never used prior to their extended holiday are stimulated, and he finds himself grinning at her.  
  
"Don't you _dare_ ," he purrs.

 

He gasps, and she can feel him twitch beneath her fingers. She draws her hand away deliberately, until the only point of contact between her hand and his arousal is the pads of her fingertips against thin, sensitive skin.  
  
Her eyes are bright, and the hand not currently teasing along the length of his erection tightens against his on her hip. "Well now," she purrs back, leaning close to him again, her lips a hairsbreadth away from his as she draws her hand back from his arousal, leaving that same precise amount of space below as above, "That sounds like a challenge, Mr. Holmes."

 

Of course, she leaves it so that they are only millimeters apart. Their lower bodies, their upper bodies. The only question is, who will move to close the gap first?  
  
Sherlock refuses to break in this case. Refuses to be the one to give in.  
  
"Everything is a challenge with you, Woman," he says. "But I believe you're aware of how that's part of the appeal."

 

He is holding himself tightly, refusing to give in, and she is heated and wanting and Irene supposes it isn't really giving in when she knows intimately just how much he is straining against that control. She leans forward, capturing his mouth with hers, demanding and driving, and her fingers curl around his erection again, stroking even as she guides him towards her.  
  
"But only _part_ of the appeal," she agrees, murmuring against his mouth.

 

He moans against her mouth as she guides him into her, as he focuses on the feeling of her, hot around him. He puts one hand up to the mirror to brace himself as he starts in a rhythm, moving into and out of her slowly.  
  
"Yes," he says. "I could list you the rest, if you'd like."  
  
Right now, he's fairly certain he'd do anything she liked. Anything at all.

 

She gasps as he moves within her and braces herself against the narrow ledge, letting it take her weight as she wraps her legs around his waist. As he moves, she tightens her grip around his waist, her own attempt to take control of the rhythm he sets.  
  
Her voice is breathless, and a moan threatens to bubble past her lips, but she wraps an arm around his shoulder, her nails at the back of his neck, not biting yet but she expects he would know exactly what she _could_ do in that position.  
  
"I'd rather you tell me that you know my being in London won't stop me from _misbehaving._ "

 

He leans in to press his mouth to hers, to gently nip at her lower lip as they move together. She moves to take control of the rhythm and he allows it for a few thrusts before moving back into his own. Challenging, and then giving in.  
  
"I certainly hope not," he replies against her lips.  
  
Her misbehavior is, after all, another thing that appeals.

 

"Good--"  
  
He wrests control back from her and she growls in irritation, nipping at his lower lip in return, her own bite a touch harsher than his. She shift her hips, urging him on, and her fingers curl, biting into his shoulder as she feels tension coil deep within her.  
  
"Don't think for a second it'll make it any easier for you to figure out what I'm doing either," she manages to gasp.

 

"And cheapen the experience of working it out on my own?" he replies, his own voice just as breathless.  
  
Her nails bite into his skin and he hisses in pleasure. He's nearing orgasm far too quickly, he thinks, but at the same time they're in a confined space without much time.  
  
He grins against her mouth. "Unless you really think you can fool me for that long."

 

He has worked out at least one of the things she likes with laser-like precision.  
  
She doesn't have to see him to know exactly the expression on his face with that challenge, the smug smirk that cannot be hidden by breathless gasps, that makes her _want_ to prove him wrong and make him beg. The prospect of it is enough to send her tumbling over the edge with a wordless cry, mental stimulation turning to physical pleasure in a way that only he can manage to wring from her.  
  
Still, she shudders and comes undone at his words, but her grip doesn't slacken, remaining tight, digging into his skin. Her head falls back against the cool slick mirror, but she moves with him still, insistent on drawing him with her.  
  
"I have no doubt I can. You'll have to resort to peering through the windows."

 

He gasps as she tightens around him, her pleasure drawing out his. He cries out as his own orgasm overtakes him sharply and suddenly. Even as the orgasm ebbs away, he holds tightly onto her, keeping her close.  
  
There are things that this sexual escapade tells him, of course. Primarily, that her trauma in Karachi was, most likely, not of a sexual nature. That would become too traumatic after her night terror, and no amount of flirtation and mental stimulation would bring her out like this. It also informs him that she has very strong thigh muscles, which is not unexpected considering the heels she prefers when she's not injured.  
  
"You underestimate me," he says, voice breathless.

 

She does not realize what he deduces, what she has given away. Not at the moment, not yet, and there is a slim chance she never will. If she does, she will no doubt draw her armour tighter around herself, wanting to be the mystery, wanting to protect herself from what weakness and vulnerability he would be able to see.  
  
For the moment, all she wants to think of is the endorphins pleasantly coursing their way through her veins, the fact that of all the places in the world, they are right _here_ , right now, and the fact that Sherlock Holmes' penchant for flirting with danger extended to the thrill of discovery, of being caught. A part of her supposes that is fitting, given how often he catches murderers, solves their puzzles.  
  
The thought makes her smile with an almost uncharacteristic softness, and she does not break away from his embrace, feeling his heartbeat as he holds her close. "Or I enjoy the extra effort you put into being impressive when you want to prove me wrong," she answers, pressing her lips to his temple.

 

He smiles, and even he might describe the look as something _fond_. Just because they don't love each other doesn't mean they don't _like_ each other, at times.  
  
"You usually don't enjoy it quite as much once I do," he replies.

 

"Then it's a good thing you haven't yet," she tells him, pulling back just enough for him to see a familiar smirk on her lips.  
  
What is left of the politician's wife's pale lipstick is smudged, but she doesn't properly care.

 

"I'm still in my afterglow, Woman," he teases. "Don't start an argument just yet, would you?"  
  
Unfortunately, they will be missed in their seats soon, and he doesn't want questioning to take place just yet. He pulls his hips back to tuck himself back in his trousers, and lifts her hand so he can kiss her palm above her ring. A simple, but sentimental gesture.  
  
She'll be the death of him.

 

The touch of his lips against her palm leaves a lingering warmth that has nothing to do with sex, that is pure sentiment and that she would be hard pressed to ever admit to feeling. Still, her expression is fond as she watches him draw back, set himself to rights. She does the same, slipping off the narrow ledge and brushing the dress carefully back down over her hips. A quick glance backwards in the mirror shows her a thousand signs of what has transpired, written in both their bodies, but the only one that the ordinary men and women on the plane would read peeps out of his trouser pocket.  
  
"I suppose I can wait until Vienna," she allows with a fond smile, reaching for him and plucking the telltale knickers from his trouser pocket. Her eyes all but sparkle with mischief as she slips them back on.

 

He gives her a grin as she pulls the last of her undergarments up. He plans to watch the faces in first class, to see who notices and who misses all the signs of what just happened. If he can't play the luggage game, at least he has this.  
  
"I'll return first," he says. "Unless you'd prefer to give up all pretense and go back together."

 

She runs a hand through her hair, tousling it even more. Obvious, but she doubts half of first class would notice. She gestures to the door. "The woman in the second row wearing pearls will ignore you coming out, and sniff disapprovingly when I do. Man in the back row'll have his hand under the blanket," she tells him. "Or would you wager that I'm wrong?"

 

"The man in the back row has an undiagnosed prostate condition," Sherlock replies smoothly. "I'd be very surprised if his hand would have any effect under the blanket."  
  
He turns his head to look back at her, smirking.  
  
"You pick the hair color when we go to Moscow. Should you be right." He'd never admit he's wrong.

 

Her smile reaches her eyes at his wager, sparkling with pleased laughter (and, if she were to admit it, a good dose of endorphins).  
  
"Not naming a price if you should be instead," she points out, waving towards the door. "Sounds like you don't expect to need it."

 

"Oh, no," he says. "I do have a price."  
  
He doesn't name it, he simply pushes open the door, stepping out into the aisle.

 

She waits until he is gone to use the facilities, to properly clean herself up. It isn't that there is any _modesty_ at work, simply the fact that the lavatory hardly fits two. At the sight of a few drops of blood on her knickers, Irene frowns and begins mentally counting day before realizing the accumulation of the stress of the last few months, her weight loss, injuries, makes it a futile exercise at best. There is not enough blood to be certain she is truly menstruating, or it is simply a spot due to over vigorous exercise. She sighs and presses the call button for the flight attendant, just in case.  
  
A few words, an exchange, and a few minutes later she emerges from the lavatory. As predicted, the pearl-wearing woman glared at her, sniffing disapprovingly. She looked over at the man in the back, his hand, as predicted, beneath the blanket, though his expression of frustration indicated that, while the mind was obviously willing, the body was weak.  
  
She sits back down and arches an eyebrow at Sherlock. "Seems I win," she says. She doesn't point out that it would seem he was _also_ correct.

 

"Halfway," he replies. He'd noticed the flight attendant going towards the lavatories, but decides that asking is probably rude. Feminine hygiene, he decides, and promptly promises to delete it from his mind at the first possible opportunity.  
  
"From my time on planes, I always assumed it was fairly understood that the lavatories had several uses, considering how often both are in play," he says. "The disapproval by our conservative housewife seems a bit...I don't know. Surprising."

 

She tucks her feet beneath her without thought, tilting her head towards the housewife in question. "There's moral disapproval and then there's jealous disapproval," she tells him. "I'd say she's expressing both. She has a vivid imagination, her spouse doesn't."  
  
She gives him a sidelong look. "Does a tie imply no one collects the spoils of their wager, or both?"

 

"Or a tiebreaker," he suggests. "It's hardly a short flight, after all."  
  
And although he knows she could probably use more rest, he also knows from living with John that night terrors rarely come singly. Once they're in the privacy of their own hotel room, it'll be different. For now, they should both stay awake.  
  
He does miss coach. He isn't entirely certain what sort of a game they could play to break their tie.

 

His suggestion earns him another long, studying look. There is something in his words that niggles at the back of her mind, something that she should recognize and pick up on but that she has not yet unraveled.  
  
"I'd suggest figuring out the pilots," she says lightly. "But I believe they frown on passengers trying to get into the cockpit."

 

"One's wife is expecting a child," Sherlock says, without missing a beat. "Girl. Just received the ultrasound, making him a bit jumpy. The other one has been day-drinking but doesn't seem to think it's a problem, probably because he's an alcoholic. Also because his father was an alcoholic and he doesn't realize it's abnormal. The first pilot, named Mike, by the way, is fairly confident in his ability to take care of the plane on his own. After all, he's got a family to watch over."  
  
He leans back, relaxed.

 

Surprise gives way to shock gives way to disbelief until he finishes, settling back, smug, and Irene's lips thin, a futile attempt to keep the smile from tugging at her lips. "You forgot the part where the our responsible family man is the one who supplies our flight attendant with her Vicodin," she answers. "And your drinker drinks to self-medicate. Chronic migraines, but doesn't want to admit it, because then he'd lose his license."  
  
That last part is a guess, but she isn't about to tell _him_.

 

"Nah," Sherlock replies. "He drinks because he's always drunk in the daytime. His copilot thinks it's anxiety."  
  
She isn't asking him how he knows.  
  
This is very annoying, and the little furrow in his brow says that.  
  
Also, knowing about the Vicodin. How did she work that out?

 

He's annoyed, it's obvious, and she smiles in response, knowing it would irritate him even more.  
  
"You're curious how I figured it out," she might be giving him a run for his money by how smug she sounds.

 

"We're not discussing me."  
  
This is the problem, actually.  
  
"Though I imagine it had something to do with the stewardess's hands. Shaking."

 

She shakes her head, smile growing. She doesn't care if it's obvious how much she enjoys needling him; because it being obvious will simply irritate him and amuse her more.  
  
"Try again," she says, leaning towards him. "If you get it right this time I _may_ ask how you knew about the drinker."

 

Sherlock considers this for a moment.  
  
"Her pocketbook," he says. "When she retrieved some sort of feminine hygiene product for you in the lavatory."

 

Her smile turns to irritation instead, at the mention of his observation.  
  
"Not even close." In fact, the flight attendant's pocketbook had been how she'd been _certain_ , though she had her suspicions much earlier on. She pauses a moment as the flight attendant in question approaches, offering complimentary champagne, and this time Irene takes a glass, settling comfortably back in her own seat. She's not likely to sleep, not now, but neither is she tempted to drink to calm her nerves. "It was his belt buckle, wasn't it?"

 

He takes a glass as well, scanning the flight attendant for some sign of the Vicodin use that he'd missed. Pupils slightly dilated, but that could also be the altitude. The Woman must've guessed.  
  
"No," Sherlock says once the attendant leaves. "A belt buckle would've been a guess. I observe, I don't guess."

 

She watches him, sees his eyes moving over the flight attendant, and sips from the champagne glass. She does not bother pretending not to be delighted, smug, as she watches him try to figure it out.  
  
"Then do tell, Mr. Holmes," she murmurs. "What are your _observations?_ "

 

He leans over to her, narrowing his eyes somewhat. Despite the irritation obvious from the line between his eyes, he's positively _loving_ this game.  
  
"You guessed," he says.

 

She smirks, refusing to give anything away, and takes another slow, deliberate sip from the champagne glass. It's inexpensive champagne, but the altitude mutes any of its subtle or offensive nuances. Its main function, Irene imagines, is to keep first class passengers, mostly the wealthy and entitled, pleasantly inebriated enough to keep from making demands, and cowing those who weren't the wealthy from making any demands at all.  
  
Instead of taking the bait and leaning over, Irene rises and takes an uninvited seat in his, her knees against his. Despite her obvious smugness, there is a brightness in her eyes that gives away precisely how much she's enjoying this.  
  
"Prove it."

 

"Lack of solid evidence," he says, leaning in slightly, undeterred by her closeness. "Everything that could point towards the Vicodin usage and who is supplying it could all be other, more obvious answers. And I know you know Occam's Razor."  
  
He reaches over and takes a small sip of his own champagne. He makes a little face and sets it aside.

 

A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, threatening the smirk, at the face he makes upon tasting the champagne. "Now you're trying to goad me into telling you my secrets," she tells him. It's working, of course, but she wants him to know that she _is_ seeing through it.  
  
"If the expectant father is as eager to provide for his family as you seem to think, he would be less incline to still fly. Instruction pays better, gives him more time at home with his wife and the incubating daughter. It isn't for the joy of the job; it isn't what he likes. But his shoes are new, expensive. Hardly the sort of thing a newly cautious man would buy instead of saving up for his child. Hardly the sort of thing to buy on _his_ salary."  
  
She gestures to him with the glass in her hand. "Which means a secondary source of income. And a lucrative enough one that he's justifying it as providing for his family. And rather perfect. He knows his copilot drinks, knows if he's caught with drugs he can blame it on his alcoholic copilot."

 

He finds himself smiling, thoroughly impressed. He controls himself.  
  
"You based your theory on what I knew," he says. "Interesting."

 

"You offered," she reminds him.  
  
Still, she catches herself preening at the look on his face. "You're refining your own deductions based on mine right now."

 

"Not even remotely," he says. "I know what I've said is absolutely accurate. I was paying attention, using my senses."  
  
It's probably wrong to want her again so soon. They have so much else to do, and so little on this plane apart from scouring each other's minds.  
  
Which, as it is, happens to be terribly enjoyable.

 

"And paying attention wasn't enough to tell you that he's the one supplying her," she reminds him. There is a distinct urge in the back of her mind to take him again, despite the fact that the endorphins of mere moments ago still had not faded or the limitations of biology.  
  
She might settle for kissing that smirk off his face.  
  
"And for all the attention you claim to have paid, you're hardly proving any of it," she informs him.

 

"I don't need to," he says. "I'm accurate, and you can confirm with the pilot once we land, if you like. I'm far too precise to be guessing, but I think you know that already."  
  
He raises an eyebrow, as if requesting her to ask how he knows.


	4. Inexhaustible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the afterglow of their latest liaison, Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes continue to spin plans, both mutual and selfish. But how selfish are their plans truly, or are they simply fooling themselves that they can walk away?

Irene mirrors his raised eyebrow with one of her own, her expression teasing, as if she knows exactly what he wants, and has absolutely no plans to give it to him.  
  
Setting the glass aside, she leans in close. "Former consulting detective," she murmurs. "Until about half an hour ago bored to tears, distracted by terrible telly, then distracted by his brilliant companion. Now he's playing at being coy and evasive. Do you want me to tell you to be impressive, Mr. Holmes?"

 

"I also know he has a best friend named Rob who's worried about our pilot's wife," Sherlock says. "But I'm sure he'll take good care of her in the interim."  
  
He reaches out, traces a finger across the Woman's jaw.  
  
"I want to see what you can deduce from my knowledge."

 

Her eyelids flutter at the touch of his finger along the line of her jaw, and despite the post-coital chemical cocktail still pleasantly percolating through her veins, her pupils dilate ever-so-slightly as her lips curve into a speculative smile.   
  
She shifts in the seat so that she is facing the same way he is, close enough that she can lean against him if she chose but with enough distance between them that it would have to be a conscious choice. " _That_ answer's too obvious. How did you know about the alcoholic?"

 

"Again," he says, with a slightly victorious smirk. "I observed."  
  
He shifts slightly in his seat. "I saw him at the airport bar when we arrived. Overheard a conversation from the other pilot to his friend Rob on his mobile in the lobby. Lots of baby discussion."  
  
He nods. "And the Vicodin?"

 

This time she does lean against him, a gesture that the cabin crew and fellow passengers would consider simply one of comfortable affection. Irene, on the other hand, makes certain that it allows her to stretch out comfortably, and takes up more of his seat than he'd likely want her to have.   
  
"I _observed_ ," she answers. "She was nervous before boarding the plane. Shredding a napkin, worrying at the scarf she'd been wearing. Afraid to fly. Now she's in a daze. Doesn't do very well with special requests. Obviously taking something to calm her nerves without impairing most of her functions. And the bottle was in her purse. As if anyone believes the label for antibiotics."

 

"If I were biologically capable of it, I'd have you right here in this seat," he tells her, leaning in to just brush her nose with his. "Just as an observation."  
  
She thinks the way he does. She _remembers_ people and the way they act, and that's rare. He's never met a mind so aligned with his.  
  
No, they could never work in the long term, he knows. A relationship with all of its rules isn't what they're made for. This, this holiday from death, and whatever bursts they'll build after, they're what they can do. He'll take it.

 

There is something dreadfully sentimental, dreadfully ordinary about this, or so she would think if she were to allow herself to think on the implications of this at all. She refuses to think on the implications, refuses to think of how the night terrors may be kept at bay if she drifts off again.   
  
Still, she smiles at his words. "Then it's a good thing you aren't being distracted by biology," she teases. "Or you wouldn't be able to tell me about the gambling habit our disapproving matron's found herself caught in."

 

He keeps his eyes on the Woman.  
  
"Twitchiness as she holds her mobile, waiting to hear about her latest ring of bets. Indentation on her left finger, showing she had a fairly expensive ring there until recently. And then, of course, what she's watching."

 

At the mention of the woman's recently lost ring, Irene's thumb runs over the back of the politician's ring on her own hand. She decides that as soon as they leave Vienna, the amethyst ring will take its place. It is more herself, and they had agreed that they would be themselves in Vienna.  
  
She does not think on the implication of that either, or whether or not he'll remove the band on his hand, or of the fact that his band is more of a match to the amethyst ring than the showy diamond.  
  
"The Ascot Cup," she says, looking back up at him rather than the woman in question. "Dreadfully poor taste, to bet on the Queen's horse."

 

"But fitting, considering that's what her recently deceased father always bet on," Sherlock agrees. "Someone should really mention that there are better ways to manage one's grief."  
  
Not that Sherlock would be really aware. Grief isn't something he handles well at all.

 

She chuckles low at that, her focus remaining on him and not the woman in question. She makes no move to leave, seemingly content exactly where she is, stretched out against him. It is, of course, an experiment to see how long it would take to irritate him.  
  
There is no need to point out neither of them are ones who can be held up as exemplary examples of dealing with grief. They'd both rather move the world.  
  
"Is there a woman on your map named Sibyl Vane?" she asks suddenly.

 

He raises an eyebrow at the question, and he immediately pulls the web up in his mind, remembering every name that he'd tacked onto it.  
  
"No," he replies. "Should she be?"

 

Irene shrugs and does not move. It had been an idle curiosity, a whim, to ask him.   
  
"No, I suppose the work she does hardly interested him." A pause, and looking at him she can tell he'll want to know who the woman is. Why she'd ask. And if she did not tell him he would find it for himself, and in the process possibly rip her plans for Vienna apart.   
  
"She's a symphony conductor, with an eye for art forgeries, and clientele that's not quite as discerning as they should be. Charming woman."

 

Sherlock is almost surprised that she tells him, but he supposes it makes sense. If she tells him some things, she can keep others hidden. The fact that she's mentioning this now must mean that Miss Vane is going to be an imminent issue.  
  
"Will we be meeting her in Vienna or in Moscow?" he asks.

 

"What makes you think _we_ 're meeting her at all?" she retorts, but there is no heat or evasion in her words, simply the same light, teasing tone.  
  
"I met her in Vienna. I simply wondered if she were on your list."

 

He smirks.  
  
"A lesser man might feel jealousy."  
  
He feels nothing of the sort.

 

She smirks in return. She wonders how they have found themselves here, all comfortable flirtation without the raw exhaustion of Las Vegas or Montreal. Even the memory of her dreams seemed more tolerable in this moment.  
  
"Then aren't we fortunate you aren't a lesser man."

 

"Aren't we just?"  
  
There's a ding above them, and a calm German voice begins explaining that they will be beginning their descent into Austria in the next few moments. Sherlock's eyebrows go up. He's usually an excellent judge of time.  
  
"I think it's obvious what we should do first," he says.

 

"Is 'first' before or after you tell me about the diabetic sitting in business class based on the tapestry print bag on the luggage carousel?" she asks, pulling herself up to a seated position.   
  
Irene has no intention of moving, of course, but it would keep the flight attendant from simpering irritation if she appeared to be even pretending to comply with the rules.  
  
As she does, she slips the politician's bride's diamond off her hand, and places the amethyst and diamond ring from Montenegro on the fourth finger of her left hand.

 

The sentimentality of the ring is not lost on him, but he can't help but admit to himself that it suits her far better than the showy diamond. It's part of the reason he wanted to keep it after he thought she'd died.  
  
"After," he says, only partially put out that she'd worked that out herself.  
  
He nods.  
  
"Dinner?"

 

She turns, looking at him over her shoulder, as if she can tell he is put out by her words, pleased and smirking and smug all at once.  
  
"Again? Be careful, Mr. Holmes, or I'll begin to think you're insatiable."

 

He smirks. Sex, as a bodily function, is far from interesting. Intimacy with the Woman, however, is fascinating and intriguing. If he weren't certain they'd tire of each other quickly, he would suggest it as a regular, hourly thing. He imagines he would never be bored nor would they repeat themselves twice.  
  
With her closeness, he puts an arm around her waist to pull her that much closer.  
  
"I didn't think you'd be exhausted just yet."

 

His gesture earns him a laugh as she leans back into him, her lips against his neck, her breath warm against his skin. There is something easy about it, something comfortable about the way they are at the moment that should concern her, but she reminds herself that there is only the distance between Vienna and Moscow left for this holiday, and a little indulgence for that long was hardly to be faulted. (She does not think of London, of returning from the dead, of being Irene Adler again and what it would mean.)  
  
"Are you implying you could exhaust me?"

 

"Are you inferring that I couldn't?" he retorts with a raised eyebrow. Now, that _is_ a challenge.  
  
To the other passengers, they must just be like any other lovers on an airplane. They miss the nuances, they miss the stolen jewelry and the scars hidden under clothing.  
  
That is, he decides, what makes them different from other lovers. They don't miss these things.

 

She smirks, her fingers trailing along the inseam of his trousers, nails tracing a path upwards from his knee, and she stretches enough to press a kiss behind his ear, deliberately teasing, affectionate but without the intimacy or urgency of nipping at his lip. As if she can, and will, wait far longer than he would.  
  
"Are you sure I'm not saying that to make you want to try?"

 

He lets out a breath at the feel of her lips against his skin, the warmth of her breath against his ear. This, combined with the touch of her fingers against his trousers is enough to make his brain positively certain it can overcome biology. If seduction is an art, then the Woman is an old master.  
  
"Mmmm," he says, as though considering it. "It would be an easy enough deduction to say that you are."  
  
The announcement over them says they should fasten their lap belts for descent.

 

Irene ignores the announcement even as the plane's descent causes her ears to pop. "Well, an easy deduction's hardly impressive," she teases. "You'll have to do better than that."

 

"Oh, will I?" he says, smirking.  
  
This casual flirtation, this teasing, it makes him happy. Happiness, of course, is another weakness she brings to him. He's far too attached. They both are.  
  
Still, he considers the challenge. Since their relationship added continued sexuality to the mix, he's found that neither of them are particularly exhaustible when it comes to desiring the act. And she, far more experienced than he is, would probably know the best ways to avoid exhaustion. He'd need to research.  
  
"Oh," he says, apparently off-topic, "I'm going to need a new mobile phone."  
  
For research.

 

There is a comfortable affection in their touches at the moment, in the way she is relaxed against him even as she picks out the contents of his pockets based solely on the outlines pressed against her back as she leans against him. It is, she thinks, exactly like the off-handed way he mentions needing a mobile. There is nothing accidental, nothing offhand, about anything he says; he is the very soul of deliberation, except at those extraordinarily rare moments when sentiment slips.  
  
"Oh?" she asks, a smirk curling at her lips like cigarette smoke. "Planning on losing yours already?"

 

"I need something with a faster internet connection," he says. "The one I have is pitiful in comparison."  
  
She traces her fingers across his trousers, and he imagines she's looking in his pockets without looking, finding the flaws in his skin without seeing them. He leans up to press his lips to the corner of her mouth.  
  
The caution light blinks, reminding them to fasten their lap belts again. It's too easy to simply ignore it.

 

He presses his lips to the corner of her mouth, and it is the work of a moment to tilt her head, to catch his lips with hers. No doubt the disapproving passengers would see it as nothing more than self-indulgent affection. None of them would understand the lazy chase, the careful, teasing exploration that in and of itself is another chess move in the game they play.  
  
"Mmm," she hums against his mouth, her lips curved in a pleased smirk. "Planning on using your mobile more often in Vienna... Expecting to need research?"

 

"A bit," he admits. "Always best to have as much information as you might need."  
  
There's a small rumble of turbulence as the plane descends, but Sherlock doesn't bother worrying about his lap belt or the fact that the Woman isn't quite in her seat. If they had something to need a lap belt for, they'd be in far more trouble than just sitting incorrectly in a seat.

 

Out of the window, Irene can see Vienna's skyline in all its Old World charm as the plane descends. Modernity added glass and steel to the city, but it seemed to do little more than add a sparkle to its dense buildings and reflect off its water. She cannot see the Hofburg Palace from her vantage point, but she remembers it well.

It would be the perfect place, she thinks, to determine whether Vienna had changed in the last few months, whether she could still consider a particular woman there an ally or a friend.

There is a dull thud as the landing gear deploys in anticipation of their arrival, and Irene smirks to herself. "I already know how well you enjoy the opera, Mr. Holmes. What are your thoughts on the symphony?"

 

"All depends on the company," he replies, turning his head to follow her gaze. Vienna was a favored place when he was young for holidays, but he holds no real sentiment to the place. That may change, considering who he is traveling with and the circumstances.  
  
"In comparison to the opera, there will be significantly less murderous results here," he says. He believes so, at any rate. Unless this Sybil Vane appears to be a threat to the Woman. Or, more importantly, to Sherlock.

 

The pilot's voice announces their imminent landing, and instructs the flight attendants to take their seats, and Irene continues to make absolutely no sign of moving back into her own seat.  
  
She traces her finger against his knee, the gesture seemingly idle, an arc, straight lines, garden paths. "I hope that doesn't mean you anticipate being bored."   
  
She reaches for her phone, and makes no attempt to hide what she is looking up, the Hunter's Ball at Hofburg Palace. She does not need to look very long to know that her query would be there, if she were in Vienna at all.

 

"Not at all," he replies. His eyes glance at the phone, and he scans his memory to who she'd be looking for in such a place. The idea of a sentimental dance doesn't even come to mind when he sees just how specific the location she's thinking of is.

Sentiment is, after all, something he sees in other people and ignores in himself and her. He has no reason to go to any ball. No piece of Moriarty's web to shoot in one of the opera boxes, no serial killer hiding in a Bahamian island. Every place they've visited on their journey has been singlemindedly part of his destruction of the web. Every place but one. This one.

He wonders what, exactly, that means for the two of them. Or, really, for him.

"You'll forgive me if I decide not to wear a tie this time."

 

There were a myriad of other ways she could encounter Sibyl Vane in Vienna. The symphony itself, slipping into the woman's office. She could have simply texted the woman the same way she had texted Moran, as an anonymous voice in the dark. There is no specific reason to _be_ in Vienna, no specific reason it has to be the Hunter's Ball.  
  
And yet here they are.  
  
Perhaps it is why she asks about Sibyl at all, to give herself a reason to be in Vienna. She refuses to consider it.  
  
A smirk plays on her lips, as she pulls away from him, slips the mobile back into her pocket. "So you're planning on standing out then."

 

"Only just," he says. "After all, it's been far too long since I've been able to be Sherlock Holmes."  
  
To be himself and be on this holiday---that seems almost too good to be true. A lot about this detour seems too good to be true.  
  
But he doesn't believe in that sort of thing. It _is_ good.

 

She laughs, low and anticipatory, as a light shudder runs through the plane as it makes contact with the runway. "Be careful, Mr. Holmes," she tells him, a devilish smirk on her lips. "You'll be surprised yet."


	5. The Mind's Minuet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amid the disguises and self portraits populating a Viennese masquerade, two ghosts dance a very particular dance...

The ball is, apparently, costume. Or, at least, a mask is required. The very idea is rather silly to Sherlock, but enticing at the same time. The Woman says that a disguise is really a self-portrait, and where better to observe the self-portraits of the people at the ball than to see them attempting to cover it?  
  
After they checked into the hotel, they separated. He to get a suit, her to find a dress. He staunchly refused to find something with a tie. Too long he's been slipping into and out of his real self, it feels good to wear something with the top two buttons undone, and to feel his own curls atop his head, albeit with a texture of someone who has frequently bleached and dyed their hair recently. He gets a haircut and finds a dark suit with a purple shirt beneath, tailored the way he likes it, rather than how a character might.  
  
He leaves the wedding band on his finger.  
  
The mask he picks is simple, black with a dark purple band across the front. He has no desire to disguise himself, and the mask says this. The eye holes are large enough for him to look around easily, as he'll need to do. After all, he has to find the Woman. That's all part of this game.  
  
As he steps from the car towards the ball, he knows very well that's exactly what he's walking into. Another game. And, knowing the Woman, a good one.

 

The precisely sculpted gardens of the Hofburg Palace are already buzzing with the low, genteel sounds of the guests of the Hunter's Ball, the swirl of women in silk and satin, of men in dark suits with splashes of colour, their masks alternately garish and terrifying, or starkly simple.   
  
Irene watches them pass and adjusts her mask, a seemingly delicate black affair, its dramatic swirls and curlicues creating the shape of a bird rising from the ashes. Her dress is a sleek black affair, with a sash of white that hides one shoulder and bares the other. The only splashes of colour she wears is blood red on her lips, and the wink of gold and amethyst on her left hand. She sees a familiar figure exit a hired car, his dress and mask obvious, screaming who he was from the rooftops, even as the ball's attendees swirl around him, oblivious to the walking dead in their midst, and a look of pleased anticipation crosses her face.  
  
She crosses his path, making utterly inconsequential small-talk with an overweight banker with a heart condition and three ex-wives.

 

Most of the masks people wear aren't meant to truly hide who they are. They're meant to slightly distort, yes, perhaps accentuate something else they're wearing. The Woman won't be in a proper disguise either, he thinks. Something just hidden enough to fit in, but never something to be overlooked.

He images that, unlike himself, she'd have already found someone to talk with, someone to blend in with. His eyes scan the crowd, skimming over brunette women and men around him. No, not dressed as a man tonight. Not when she could be Irene Adler for the evening.

He stays at the edge of the pavement, not ready to join the crowd. Merely observing.

 

Light glints off her intricate updo, pearls strategically scattered among the woven curls, and she is, even masked, every inch Irene Adler, severe and beautiful and untouchable. The banker is clearly out of his element. Even through his gilded mask, she can see his eyes flicker down to her breasts then nervously back up. He's dull, ordinary, though by conversation she finds out he's been to the symphony, that he does not enjoy it but future ex-wife number four does.   
  
She disengages herself from him with a whispered word and a trace of lipstick on his cheek, something said future ex-wife will no doubt notice, and slips back towards the pavement, the scent of sandalwood and vanilla curling about her.  
  
"Don't tell me you'd rather watch than play tonight, Mr. Holmes."

 

He recognizes the scent of her. It's the same one that curled through his flat when she'd snuck in the window, the same scent that stayed clinging to his pillows for what seemed like days. He turns his head to see her, elegant and mysterious in her mask and dramatic dress. He supposes he should feel under dressed. He doesn't.  
  
"Looking for ex-wife number five?" he asks, nodding in the direction the man she was speaking to is walking.

 

She can tell the exact moment he recognizes her, can see all the tiny ways his stance and his expression change as he turns towards her. Her lips curve into a smile as she watches his eyes flick over her, and she shakes her head, tsking. "He won't be bored of her for another six months, at least," she answers, her own gaze sweeping him from head to toe. "But she won't take too well to finding another woman's lipstick on his cheek."

 

"Always misbehaving," he says, though he certainly doesn't disapprove. He nods to the door. "Our insomniac coat guard won't be nearly as forgiving if we take advantage of the room as our man in Montenegro."  
  
All the same, he extends his arm for the Woman. Sexual activities or no, he imagines tonight will be extremely stimulating.

 

She takes his arm without hesitation, her fingers light on the sleeve of his coat and the amethyst ring on her finger winking in the light. A glance at the crowd, slowly drifting its way towards the Palace's wide entrance, and she sees lawyers and heiresses, dilettante playboys and businesswomen. The banker had been a taste, a tease, the promise of being Irene Adler again, of misbehaviour and secrets that topple careers and countries.   
  
Warm pleasure settles at the base of her spine at the very thought, and her nails dig ever so slightly into his coat sleeve as she allows the crowd to carry them towards the entry. "Good. I'd hate to repeat a performance."

 

"I sincerely doubt that will ever be a problem for you, Woman," he says. He feels her fingers tighten around his arm and a slight smirk appears on his lips. So many others are here for the Ball. The Woman and he are there for the game.  
  
"The only difficult thing will be finding a proper challenge for each other," he says. "Even the politician's wife with the affectionate cat has been eyeing you curiously."

 

She barely glances around as they sweep into the palace entry, the precisely groomed gardens giving way to warm polished wood and swooping spaces. The palace is meant to awe, to intimidate, but Irene spares little for the room they are in. The room, the space, was useful for what it could do, how it could influence those around them, but the game was what was of actual interest, and his opening gambit required a response in kind.

"The one currently having an affair with her husband's secretary? Boring," she dismisses with a smile that could almost be called affectionate. "Tell me about the lawyer with the prosthetic leg."

 

"Wife has extremely expensive tastes and he has no ability to say no to her," he says. "Look at the state of his sock. Shoes are expensive and noticed, so he's economizing on what he thinks won't be. She, conversely, has new lipstick. Lipstick Queen in Medieval, just came out last month.'  
  
He won't explain why he knows this.  
  
"She gets his money, he tries desperately to save. She's banking on a Northern Cruise for their anniversary."

 

"Illamasqua's Encounter, if you'd just ask," she says in return. There is absolutely no reason to assume his research into lipstick is because of her, except that she expects it would irritate him for her to assume so. And if she were right, it would be properly impressive.  
  
"The question is whether he's interesting enough that he should come into a small fortune."

 

"Absolutely not," Sherlock says without hesitation. He should ask her what she means by a small fortune, and he can only assume she's going to drop her engagement ring into his pocket.  
  
He nods to the doorway where a very thin brunette woman tugs awkwardly at the hem of her skirt.  
  
"She does," he says. "American reporter, first assignment abroad. Lied about how good her German is, as well as how experienced she is. However, from the state of her ankles in those high heels, I'd say she's more than determined enough. She's spent the last eight hours dressed like that, following around her political target of inquiry."

 

She considers the woman in question, the way she holds her hands to hide the nervously chewed nails, the way she sets her jaw as she watches the room like a hawk. Irene cannot help but smile at the obvious ambition on display.   
  
With little more than a second glance, Irene decides that the woman does not need a small fortune, but instead an interesting scandal in her first assignment abroad. Perhaps something to do with the boring politician's wife.  
  
"Are you trying to get me interested in other women, Mr. Holmes?"

 

She looks in the girl's direction and he can see her mind at work. Brilliant.  
  
"I'm simply doing what John Watson does," he replies. He gives her a smile. "Acting as a conduit for your genius."  
  
He has wondered if jealousy is something he should feel over the women that the Woman has. After all, they clearly please her sexually, and her eyes often shine in a way he can't duplicate when she finds someone new. At the same time, he knows what they have is _different_ than that. Jealousy is completely unnecessary.

 

A sidelong glance at him, and her smile is sharp and wicked and absolutely delighted beneath the intricate black mask. There _was_ an absolute difference in whatever it was they had (she refuses still to call it a relationship. The word is too fraught with idiocy and messiness) to the liaisons she occasionally indulged in. She enjoyed their company, but no matter how well they begged, how easily or beautifully they submitted, she grew bored with them all eventually, and disengaged easily, each of them no more than a temporary companion in her mind, an indulged pet.

This, however, was different. She doubted they could ever truly get bored of each other. They were too similar, their minds too _interesting_ to allow for it. But in the same vein they were also too much themselves for this liaison to work.

"Modesty doesn't suit you, even if you're a quick study on flattery," she tells him. Her hand tightens lightly on his arm, and she inclines her head towards an alcove on their left, just outside the main ballroom. The warm light glints off the pearls tucked into her hair, and strains of music drift out of the ballroom, the symphony beginning to play.

"The jeweler in the alcove. Unhappily single, widower. I expect he'd have some stories to tell your journalist, don't you?"

 

Sherlock doesn't stare where she gestures, merely turns his head slightly to look at the jeweler's reflection in one of the silver ice buckets near the bar. He _hmms_ low in his throat.  
  
"Sexually frustrated, feeling rather down on his receding hairline," he says. "He might see her approach as an advance, one I imagine she'd reciprocate considering her preference for older men. They may take more of an advantage of that alcove than expected, and I _refuse_ to play matchmaker during this party."

 

He pointedly doesn't look where she gestures, and that deepens her smile. She sway against him, ostensibly because of the debutante and her date (more interested in the music than his companion) who cross her path, and laughs low in her throat at his answer.  
  
"He'd see it as an advance and try to impress her with how many of the local politicians he's provided jewelry for," she says, watching the man. The way he fiddled with his polished watch. Nicer than what he would buy himself, but a professional type of gift. "If she's as determined as you say, she'll follow the trail to the mistresses and misspent city funds."

 

"Determined, but still young," Sherlock says. "I'd wager that she'll leave with him rather than follow a story."  
  
A wager. Now, that would be interesting.

 

She arches an eyebrow at his words. "The tie-breaker you were interested in on the flight?" she suggests. "You'll have to name your price this time."

 

"Mmhmm," he says. "I think being the first to use the handcuffs under the bed in our hotel room might be my first price."  
  
He sniffs, considering his words. He cringes.  
  
"That was a terrible line. I'll take it back and think of a better price."

 

The ballroom is spacious, cavernous, almost, and the symphony's performance fills the space subtly. It is a performance meant to be present but not the centerpiece, something noticed and remarked upon but easy to forget. Like ghosts in a ballroom.  
  
Still, Irene peers at him with laughter in her eyes behind the mask. "If you'd like, but it was a price I'd _almost_ consider letting you win just to see what you'd do."

 

"Letting me win," Sherlock says, turning to face her. He takes a step towards where some people are dancing.  
  
"Is that your subtle way of saying you believe I will?"

 

She moves with him, and her eyes scan the dance floor. Dancers come together and part, and between them she catches glimpses of the symphony itself, and a figure she knows. The work of seconds, but she turns her gaze back on him.  
  
"Consider it my not so subtle way of saying it's the only way you'd win."

 

"I'll have you know," he says. "Being 'allowed' to win is far worse than simply losing."  
  
He takes a step back from her, but still holds her hand towards the dance floor.  
  
"I intend to do neither."

 

She steps back in response, allowing the minuet to move her despite her hand in his. It helps, of course, to be able to observe the rest of the crowd, especially the dance instructor and her client a few couples to her left.   
  
"I have no doubt of your _intentions_ , Mr. Holmes," she answers. She does not bother to hide how much she is enjoying herself. She doubts she could, even if she tried. "I think you're overreaching."

 

"And what would your price be in the very unlikely case that I am wrong?" he asks. He steps forward, putting a hand to her hip as they move. He immediately thinks that he should thank Mycroft, who insisted that Sherlock not delete the dancing lessons he took in his youth.

 

His hand is warm against the cool silky fabric of her dress, and her hand rests at his shoulder. She can see a flash of red hair, tied back, over his shoulder. Sibyl Vane, conductor, most likely. But her attention isn't on the woman she claimed she'd come to Vienna to see, but on his face and the way his mask hides so very little. They are both utterly themselves, despite the masks, and she _gloried_ in it.  
  
"Those handcuffs you mentioned seem like an excellent start," she all but purrs. "As for the rest, you'll find out."

 

"Always the mystery," he says. He takes a step back with the dance, and then moves back towards her, closer. Although he is hardly the best of dancers, his timing is perfect.  
  
"Would you like to direct her to our jeweler, or shall I?"

 

"I know what you like."  
  
She is not surprised by his timing, though she is a little surprised he can dance at all, and she moves with him, keeping a decorous distance between them as he moves closer.   
  
"You direct your journalist to my jeweler and I'll direct him to her," she answers, her eyes on his. "That should take care of any... unsporting conduct, I'd say."

 

"So long as you don't give him the impression she's too dangerous to interact with," Sherlock says.  
  
And he, conversely, won't give the girl the impression that the jeweler is worth sexual relations with.

 

She turns to make a circle around him as the music directs, and the movement allows her to steal a glance towards the conductor. Yes, that was Sibyl, exactly as Irene remembers her, with dark red hair, precisely straightened, skin the colour of warm sand, and straight shoulders that bespoke societal propriety and masked a hunger for excitement.  
  
It is enough to decide for Irene that she will, before they leave Vienna, reveal herself to the other woman.   
  
But there were other games to play tonight. "Now why would I do that? She wouldn't have a story to follow otherwise."

 

He smirks again as she circles him. Her gaze drifting away from him is something he notices, but he isn't entirely certain the angle she's looking. To guess incorrectly would be to give away that he'd be guessing as to who she's looking at. He'll observe and wait.  
  
He steps in time to the music, taking her hand again.  
  
"Dance lessons, Woman?" he asks. "You excel at the minuet."

 

"I could say the same about you, Mr. Holmes."  
  
She doesn't answer the question, of course, because she is every inch herself tonight, the mystery and the untouchable desire she wants to be. And because she knows he would expect nothing less. Her hand curls around his as he takes her, and a smirk tugs at her lips.  
  
"Or are you going to tell me it was for a case?"

 

"What case could I possibly need dancing for?" Sherlock asks. "And you're assuming timing all wrong, I'm afraid."  
  
He certainly won't just tell her. It wouldn't be any fun that way.

 

Her brow furrows behind the mask, equal parts irritation at his insinuation of being wrong and at knowing that he no doubt _enjoyed_ seeing her irritated.

"I'd have guessed you'd never had a case where you'd need to know the proper way to do up garters either," she answers lightly. "And yet here we are."

 

He looks down at her, and he can practically see the fire in her eyes from irritation. She is unbelievably attractive when he's winning (even more so when she is).  
  
"Yes, but I saw it fit not to delete that information from my mind the moment the case was over," he says, taking a step back, thoroughly pleased with himself. He extends his hand and turns with the music.  
  
"Why wouldn't I delete the knowledge of this dance?" he asks. " _Think._ "

 

She spins in counterpoint to him, and while her fitted gown does not flare and sway about her, she still manages to make the motion all alluring feminine grace, ignoring the looks she is getting from the others on the dance floor.   
  
"If it _were_ a case, you'd show off," she answers, eyes bright and the same sharp smirk on her lips. "But you aren't, which means you learned somewhere _far_ more interesting."

 

"Yes," he replies. "Or..."  
  
He prefers to prompt. Her motion, sharp and graceful, is not nearly as alluring as the intelligence gleaming in her eyes. He loves to watch her work it out.

 

"Now you're being a tease."  
  
Not that she _minds_ , not in the slightest. This is how they are best, after all, the teasing apart of the puzzles, of the games. This is how they are most themselves, and this, more than heated frantic couplings in coat rooms and airplane lavatories and front seats of stolen sports cars, this is what makes their holiday so tempting, so intoxicating.  
  
She narrows her eyes as she considers, as her body moves with the minuet without prompting, her mind fully engaged by the puzzle rather than the symphony or the dance or the music. "You're evading, which means something _less_ interesting, at least in your mind. My my, Mr. Holmes, did you learn to dance in something as ordinary as a school class?"

 

"Mmmm," he says, approvingly. "And why would I remember an ordinary school class?"

 

She arches an eyebrow beneath the mask, as if surprised. But the familiar pleasant warmth sits in the pit of her stomach, the pleasure of unraveling bits of him, the joy of the game, and she draws back closer to him than the steps of the dance would strictly call for. She knows he'll notice. It's part of the fun.  
  
"Certainly not a girl. And not something _you'd_ consider necessary. It's too much of a social nicety for you to have considered keeping on your own." A smirk. "Parent, nanny, or government interference?"

 

"Consider all three and make the simplest of deductions," he says, his own smirk wide and pleased.  
  
She is---yes, the word is _sexy_ when she's deducing. Her intellect is far more attractive on her than even the impressive dress.  
  
He moves in as she moves closer than the dance requires.  
  
"We shan't tell him about this, though. He'll gloat."

 

She laughs, the sound a low purr in her throat, and she leans in, her lips almost brushing his cheek. "No, I'd rather make him weep."  
  
And over his shoulder, she catches a glimpse of men, dressed in untidy waistcoats similar to those of the staff, sweep into the ballroom and shutting the doors.


	6. Waltzing Wounded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected robbery in Vienna changes Sherlock and Irene's plans... But will it be for the better, or the worse?

Sherlock's step falters. Although he doesn't turn around, he does lean in to the Woman's ear.  
  
"They're trained not to shut the doors loudly."

 

He missteps, and her grip tightens minutely on his arm. She moves with the music still, knowing the turn that is coming up, that will allow him a better view.   
  
"They're also trained to dress well. These barely know how to wear a cuff link. Three by the east door."

 

"Organized, but not terribly intelligent," Sherlock agrees. "What do you wager they'll demand jewelry or money, or go to something as low as simply pick pocketing our illustrious guests?"

 

She doesn't even have to pause to think. The answer is obvious in the brazen way they move, the way they do not even pretend to skulk. "They're too obvious to be pickpockets. Closing the doors attracts attention. They'll be gauche about it."  
  
She looks to her left, allowing her gaze to gesture for her. "Not to mention one of the ringleaders can't keep his hands from shaking. Useless as a pickpocket."

 

He narrows his eyes. He can see the bulge by one man's pocket. Weapons. He scans them all, and in his mind's eye he can see little white lettering appear over them, with the outline of their multiple guns and knives, along with descriptions of each.  
  
"Nervous enough to be scared away that someone else might be taking control of this place first?" he asks.

 

She turns back to him, her eyes all but boring into his, as if she can figure out exactly what plan is brewing in his mind if she studies him hard enough. "Possibly," she allows, "But his partner will have to be dealt with first. Pride."

 

"Pride can easily become fear."

 

A slow smirk, and she turns with the music, the movement allowing her a glance at a dark-skinned man standing silent against the west doorway.   
  
"That sounds like you have a plan, Mr. Holmes."

 

He nods. In his plan, he is the thug, the one who tells them to leave because the Woman, his leader, already has control of the situation.

"West end by the canapes," he says. "He'll be the one to give the signal."

 

She doesn't have to look. She already knows the man is by the canapes, already knows that he is standing there stoic. But she looks anyway, and sees the set in his shoulders, the confidence in his spine and the violence in his hands. She looks, and knows that confidence means there is likely a gun at his back, hidden by the rumpled waistcoat.  
  
A warning to be careful, to remind him of the potential for violence, sits on her tongue, but she swallows it back. She is Irene Adler for the night, and he is Sherlock Holmes, and Irene Adler would not fret, does not _worry_. And so she swallows it back, and instead leans close to him again, her lips against his ear, her hand tightening briefly against his arm.  
  
"Go on then. Impress a girl."

 

He feels the warmth of her breath against his ear and it's like the first time she moved in to kiss his cheek. Time seems to slow, his mind starts to race. He sees the placement of weapons, the twitch of a finger, and the way the man's wrist turns as he prepares himself to signal.  
  
Sherlock steps away from the Woman, bee lining directly for the man. He could put on any number of personas, but here, in this place, he is Sherlock Holmes. He refuses to be anyone but.  
  
His voice is low as he stops, shoulder-to-shoulder, with the man.  
  
"If you and your little gang ruin this for us, you will be very, very sorry," he says. "And don't bother pretending you don't speak English, your manicure tells me you do."

 

Any other woman would be insulted by such an abrupt departure of her dancing partner, and indeed, several of the women on the dance floor notice Sherlock's departure and shoot Irene sympathetic looks, looks that she does not see. But then she is not other women, and instead of being insulted, she is anticipatory, her eyes following him as he makes a beeline for the man in question.  
  
There is no disguise here, she can see it. He is utterly himself as he approaches the man, and the way the man's eyes go wide when he speaks tells Irene exactly what she needs to know. The man's eyes begin to sweep the ballroom, the only thing betraying his sudden surprise is the speed with which he does so.   
  
And as Sherlock Holmes is utterly himself, she is as well, cold, watchful, implacable, untouchable, as she waits for the man in question to meet her eye, the figure in stark black and white in the middle of the dance floor, her mask a black phoenix rising and her lips a blood red scythe against pale skin.

 

Sherlock can tell from the man's stance the moment he sees the Woman. Sherlock is facing the opposite way, but he can imagine her standing there, utterly herself, dominating the room with just being within it.  
  
"We have planned this for a long time," Sherlock says. "Ruin it and we'll ruin you."  
  
He turns his head slightly, just enough for the man to see that Sherlock is quite serious about it.

 

The petty criminals masquerading as false doormen at the other entrances are getting nervous, exchanging glances as they wait for a signal that does not come. Irene's expression remains unmoved even as her mind races, counting the numbers, making plans. Their hand has been tipped, and relative anonymity was no longer a move they could count on, not with the way the man's jaw works, as Sherlock turns his head just enough to no doubt reveal something to the man in question.  
  
This was the delicate moment, the knowledge of when to push, of just _how_ much to push was enough. She waited, a sneer curling on her lips as she watched the man in question, his jaw working as he tried to find words to answer.  
  
She can't hear his answer, but the words he speak are obvious from the motion of his lips, though she is not privy to the accent that gives him away, Tunisian, by way of Greece. "So've we. And last I saw, there's more of us than you."

 

Sherlock lets out a low noise. Not a laugh, not really.  
  
"You have more than the obvious brutes, then," he says. "Or did you think that only the two of us would be here?"  
  
He lowers his voice. "You're being embarrassingly obvious in comparison."

 

The man's brow furrows, irritation warring with unease and fear on his face and Irene finds herself holding her breath even as she turns her head, meets the eye of one of the nervous criminals eyeing Sherlock and their leader at the west door. This man, boy, really, is younger, reedier and with a look of desperation about him.

He meets Irene's eye and ducks his head, trying desperately to appear inconsequential, unremarkable. She weaves her way through the dancing crowd (though he no doubt sees it more like the crowd parts for her) until she is standing in front of the boy in question. "I'd suggest you leave, pet," she tells him. "Before your friend over there turns you over to the detective he's talking to."

The Tunisian man talking to Sherlock, on the other hand, turns his attention back to the consulting detective, his stoic bravado beginning to crack, "You're bluffing."

 

The boy's shoulders tense. He is young enough to believe the world of his superior, but desperate and frightened enough to also believe the strange woman who has appeared before him. The sea of people seemed to part for her as she approached him.  
  
"Who are you?" he asks.  
  
At the same time, Sherlock's eyebrow raises at the Tunisian man's words. He gives the man a quick, cursory look. Owner, one cat. Has a daughter, age 13-16. Marital problems. Masturbates twice a day, do not shake his hand.  
  
"If you'd like to risk your life and your daughter's life for this," he says. "That is entirely up to you.”

 

The Tunisian's throat works, and a mixture of anger and sudden fear tightens the muscles of his jaw. "That bitch put you up to this, didn't she?" The desperation and rancor in his voice is too strong for a mere business associate, the soon-to-be estranged wife, perhaps.

Irene doesn't see the Tunisian's response, not when her attention is on the boy and his wide-eyed question. A quick, cursory glance over him tells her everything she needs to know. Fading tan, the way he nervously flexes his right hand, deep scars on the palm. "Someone who has been watching the man watching your 'friends'." A subtle nod towards Sherlock and the Tunisian man. "He's cutting a deal right now, to get a reduced sentence if he testifies against the rest of you. Your parents will have lost their home before you go on trial."

 

Although a common descriptor of the Woman, Sherlock knows the man is referring to his wife, not her. He lets out a little snort.  
  
"If you're sharing your criminal activities with your wife, then you have significantly more problems than just our organization," he says. He considers the aggression and certainty of the man's voice and adds, "Especially considering you don't know who she knows." There must be an enemy involved, someone he's worried she'll talk to.  
  
The boy, meanwhile, is wide-eyed and worried, and this woman has interjected herself into a place he wasn't prepared for.  
  
"Why would he do that? He said he'd protect us."

 

The Tunisian is balanced between anger and acceptance, and something in Sherlock's words tips him over the edge. He nods. "I know she knows you. And if you hurt my girl, I'll rip out your eyes."  
  
Still, despite the threat, the man makes no move besides to clench his hand at his side.  
  
"Because other people's lives are nowhere near as important as your own skin," Irene answers, watching the boy closely. His attention is riveted on Sherlock and his leader, and while Irene does not see what exchange is happening between the two, she does see the boy's reaction, the widening of his eyes at what he sees.  
  
"Ah, your friend's made up his mind, I see."

 

"You ruin this for us, you will die," Sherlock says. "Creatively. You won't be able to touch my eyes. Not that I have any intention of getting my own hands dirty."  
  
Odd. He finds he sounds very like Jim.  
  
He turns his head slightly, a quick glance to the Woman, talking to one of the boys.  
  
"Why would you warn me?" the boy asks her. "You're not protecting your own skin."

 

The Tunisian man's eyes widen as he sees something in Sherlock's demeanor that convinces him. Or perhaps it was just the cold, matter-of-fact threat. His eyes flicker away nervously as Sherlock breaks eye contact, and he nods, accepting.  
  
Irene has to catch herself from rolling her eyes at the boy's answer, and she nods in Sherlock and the leader's direction. The gesture allows her a quick glance at the pair as she continues. "That's where you're wrong, pet. I'm looking for someone like you in Vienna. Someone to deliver messages. And I'd hardly have that if your _friend_ sent you off to prison, now would I?"

 

The boy looks up to her. "You want to use me?" His expression relaxes, this makes a lot more sense to him than her simply wanting to help. After all, in his life, no one helps him. It would feel foreign. He gives her a small nod.  
  
Sherlock takes the nod that the Tunisian man gives him as consent, and he jerks his head towards the door. "Get rid of your boys and let us take care of this." It's all going so smoothly, he couldn't have asked for it to be better.  
  
That's when he hears the bang outside of the door. The bang, the kick of the lock, and the sound of someone shouting _Police!_  
  
Sherlock scowls.  
  
"Well, that was almost perfect."

 

Irene makes a mental note about the boy, committing the finer details of his face, what he _liked_ to memory so that she can find him again once she was back in Vienna. She is about to ask his name when the bang on the door echoes through the room, silencing the symphony except for one stray violin.  
  
The Tunisian man looks startled, uncertain, at the sound of the knock on the door, and his eyes harden when he realizes that things have already spun out of control. He reaches behind him, for the gun tucked away, at the same moment Irene turns towards them.  
  
Her lips thin, and she shoves the boy against the wall. "If you have a weapon, now would be an excellent time to hand it over, pet."

 

Sherlock raises up his arm, throwing an elbow into the Tunisian man's jaw. He's not an exceptional fighter, but he does know quite a few hand-to-hand combat moves if necessary. Boxing is a far better fighting style, but no one fights anymore, not without weapons. He uses his other hand to go down, to catch the man's wrist and attempt to wrestle the gun from him.  
  
The boy is startled at the Woman's attack, but he reacts easily, offering her the gun.

 

The boy had the safety on, she notices. It shows that despite his nervousness and his panic, he had brains. That helps.  
  
"Good boy, now blend in," she says idly, her finger hovering above the trigger. The crowd is beginning to panic, the last tardy violin in the symphony squawking to a surprised halt. It makes it harder to cross the room back to where Sherlock is wrestling with the leader, but Irene shoves her way through, brandishing the gun as necessary.  
  
The Tunisian man grunts with surprise at the blow to his jaw, but he keeps his bearings, and throws an elbow around Sherlock's neck in a sloppy attempt at a choke hold as the detective's hand tightens on his wrist.

 

The boy does as instructed, not even asking how the Woman will find him later. He simply accepts that she will.  
  
Sherlock grips the man's wrist and throws his weight back, to have the man tumble over his shoulder, land on his back. The gun will fall, but Sherlock will get to it first. So long as he can manage it. His own shoulder whines in protest.  
  
There's another loud noise, and a few sounds like gunfire. The police are here, Sherlock acknowledges, and they're expecting something big.

 

A particularly slow to react banker remains in her path and Irene shoulders him out of her way, the motion knocking her mask askew, obscuring her vision. She rips it off and tosses it aside as pops of what sound like gunfire ring through the room and the panic grows.  
  
Irene curses, shoves a debutante out of her path, and stops as she approaches Sherlock and the Tunisian man, now momentarily gasping on his back, scrambling weakly for the gun.   
  
"Boys," she snaps, her eyes flickering quickly over Sherlock, then back to the scene, her words heavy with the schoolmistress's displeasure. "I can't leave you alone to behave for a minute, can I?"

 

His own mask had been thrown off as he tossed the Tunisian man over his shoulder, and Sherlock looks up to see the Woman's has gone, as well. He leans over to pick up the gun.  
  
"This one tells his estranged wife a bit too much about his illegal endeavors," Sherlock says. "I think this time she decided to make certain he wouldn't come home."

 

There is another bang, this time louder, not quite as sharp as the gunshots. The police, or security, attempting to force their way through one of the doors.  
  
"Well, that much thoughtless talking should be rewarded," she answers, stepping towards the Tunisian man, still gasping for breath, and plants her shoe (heeled, not not quite as high as she normally prefers) on his chest. She scrutinizes him, and casually asks Sherlock without turning her attention away, "Kneecaps, you think?"

 

Sherlock should pity him, he thinks. A man going through a painful divorce, frightened for the life of his daughter, turning to violent crime. He can imagine that this was not the lifestyle that the Tunisian man would've preferred. He can also imagine John Watson, standing over his shoulder, telling him to let him go, that it isn't worth it.  
  
Except John Watson isn't here.  
  
"The right one," he agrees with the Woman.

 

"Good."

The man trembles beneath her foot at the answer, the whites of his eyes showing as she leans down to watch him, all ice and implacable iron. The pounding on the door continues, becomes more focused, but it will not last for long, no doubt the security has found some sort of tool to assist them.

"It could be a lot worse, pet," she says to the man as she raises the gun to take aim. "I could aim for something more vital."

Panic surges through the Tunisian man at that, and he grabs her ankle, pulling hard to unbalance her.

 

Sherlock sees the man grab her ankle, and he thinks about her leg, and the heels that aren't quite the height she'd have preferred before her injury. He imagines muscles being pulled, old wounds being torn. He should catch her, he thinks. Catch her if she starts to fall.  
  
But first, he raises up his foot and presses it down on the man's shoulder, pushing between muscle and bone. Pain. He can cause this man pain if he hurts the Woman. That's far better than merely catching her.  
  
In that way, she truly does own him. It's an irritating fact, and one he will deny if ever asked. But he knows it's true.  
  
"Let. Go."

 

The man's move unbalances her enough that she misses. Instead of the bullet shattering his kneecap as threatened, it hits the Tunisian man in the upper thigh and he cries out, instinctively arching from the pain, the motion bringing him even _more_ pain as he struggles against Sherlock's foot on his shoulder.  
  
It is, thankfully, more than enough to dislodge his grip on her ankle, and Irene sets her feet back on solid ground. She'll deny forever that she breathes a sigh of relief.  
  
The gunshot is clearly heard outside, because the banging on the door, the splintering of wood, grows. Her heart rate is up; she can feel it drive adrenaline into her blood, into her brain. "I think it's time for a strategic exit," she suggests, offering Sherlock a hand.

 

The thigh injury is dangerous. Something similar nearly killed the Woman, and Sherlock _should_ feel pity for the man. He doesn't. But he feels like he should. He ignores that sensation and takes the Woman's hand as it's offered.  
  
"Shame about the dance," he says, pushing past a few of the startled guests staring at them.


	7. An Unexpected Guest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler make their escape from the Hunter's Ball, they find themselves encountering a familiar face. Will their unexpected guest pose a threat or an opportunity?

At least one of the startled guests is looking between Sherlock and Irene and the fallen, bleeding man with utter indecision, another is moving towards the bleeding man. Not a doctor, not with those hands, but a schoolteacher. A third tries to block their way and at the sight of the warm gun and the scent of gunpowder, hesitates.  
  
"Was it? I'm enjoying myself immensely." Still, there is no denying the slight tremor in her hand as she grips his, the faint clamminess of nerves she cannot hide. She pulls him towards the stage where the musicians sit. There's likely another exit there, to allow the performers to take breaks.

 

She tugs him, and he follows easily, stopping only long enough to tuck the gun into his pocket. The man who thought about stopping them is still in his tracks, and Sherlock wonders what part of the two of them truly frightened him off. Was it the fact that they're talking about enjoying themselves, or the fact that they don't even appear slightly afraid to the outside viewer.  
  
She says she's enjoying herself, but he can feel the tremor in her hand. He thinks about the flight here, and the fear in her face from that nightmare. Things...brush off of Sherlock. He occasionally feels like he's hydrophobic, and emotions bead up and run away from him. The Woman isn't quite the same. She holds onto some things, she's affected by them. She cries. He isn't certain he'd know how.  
  
"No doubt a back door," he says. "To move equipment and instruments."

 

She would argue that there were things that he did not brush off. The way he had not hesitated to cause pain to the unfortunate thwarted criminal now bleeding on the ballroom floor. His irrational protectiveness in San Salvador. The way he had leaped off a building for John Watson. It is one of the things that mark them differently despite their similarities, that uniqueness that set them apart even from each other.

She knows when she feels, and she dominates her emotions after the fact, subsuming them, wrapping cultivated dispassion around herself like armour. He does not think he feels, and is dominated by his emotions when he is forced to realize they exist.

"If I were in the mood to be insulting, I'd call you a mind reader," she teases. There is no place for her to hide her gun, so she holds it against her side, trusting the dramatic sash of her gown to obscure it from casual view.

There is a door, in fact, behind the musicians' stage, obstructed, and a few spare instruments. She pauses long enough to pick up a violin case.

 

"I appreciate that," he says. At least she knows what he considers insulting. He glances back to see her picking up a violin case, and decides she must be procuring their disguise for escape.

"How fast can you climb?" he asks, turning the handle to open the back door.

 

"Fast enough," she answers, handing him the weapon. She didn't dare leave it behind, not at the moment, not with fingerprints and ballistics to be concerned with. "As long as you don't intend to make our way back to the hotel on the rooftops."  
  
It should concern her how easily it was to default to 'our', but she refuses to think about it.

 

He shoots her a smile. "Only a few."

He doesn't know Vienna like he knows London, but he does have an idea of how the city is laid out and how best to get back to the hotel. He tucks the weapon into his other pocket. It's heavy, personalized to the man they took it from. Cost him a good deal, he imagines. More than just his boss's leg.

He holds the door for her. "Fire escape," he says. "Climb up to the fifth floor, we can go out of the building as though we'd never been in the house at all."

 

A pleased smirk touches her lips when he holds open the door, and she pauses just outside it to eye the fire escape. Not a difficult climb, though no doubt she'd pay for it in the morning. She pauses long enough to shed the heels before reaching for the ladder. They would make the climb more difficult, slower, and an obvious ball goer who'd lost her shoes in the revelry was expected.  
  
"Good, you aren't insisting on some chivalrous plan to draw them off." She slips the violin case's carrying strap over her shoulder and begins to climb.

 

"Wouldn't be logical," Sherlock replies, though the idea had (obviously) occurred to him earlier. "You'd come to protect me and end up getting yourself into trouble."  
  
This is said lightly, and he can't possibly believe it at this point. She has, after all, saved him no less than twice in the last week. This is just another step in their very long dance.

 

"Experience does suggest you have a habit of getting into trouble alone."  
  
Her reply is just as lightly said as his, but there is no denying he has tangled himself irrevocably with her being, and that she refuses to contemplate a world without Sherlock Holmes in it. She simply refuses to think about it.  
  
The climb begins easily enough, though the metal against slick nylon stockings makes Irene keep a tight grip on the rail as she climbs.  
  
She pauses to study their target floor. "That little display will make it more obvious to your brother where we are."

 

"And that will make him watch the train stations vigilantly," he says. "He won't follow us."  
  
He glances up at her and begins to climb after. They did say they would be themselves here, he thinks. And how else would they be, but difficult and dangerous and just a little bit smug about it all?

 

The fire escape's ladder dips slightly as he climbs after her, and Irene ignores the little tension that leeches out of her when he does, and instead quickens her pace. She is more than halfway to the fifth floor before she starts feeling the effects of the climb on the healing wound in her leg.

"They weren't part of Moriarty's web." She isn't certain, but his reaction to the thieves suggested it.

 

"No," Sherlock says. As far as he is aware, of course, but he refuses to admit his own limitations, particularly in this instance. "Just a group of amateurs."  
  
He pauses in his climb to look back at the building. No one coming out after them. Odd, he'd have headed straight for the back. Why didn't the witnesses send them that way?

 

"The boy had potential."

She says nothing more until she pulls herself onto the landing of the fifth floor and takes a moment to take the weight off her injured leg. The commotion from within the ballroom drifted up intermittently, dissipating into the hum of the city. With security and the police breaking down the door, she expects no bystander wanted to pursue two mysterious strangers out the back, especially not ones who'd shown absolutely no qualms in using the firearms they'd acquired.

Still, she leans over the rail to look down, to ensure they weren't being followed. "He might watch the train stations, but we can still slip him that way."

 

The boy? Oh, yes, the boy she was talking to. She uses the past tense in reference to his potential, but Sherlock imagines she'll be able to use him frequently.  
  
He follows, stopping at the fifth floor to press his hand to his shoulder. At the beginning of their holiday, he was able to fall out of a fifth story window without any issue, now he can just barely climb it.  
  
"Wouldn't they at least send the police?" he says. "I know some of them were rather frightened of us. And, more importantly, who called them?"

 

She isn't concerned by his hand at his shoulder. She refuses to be. She steps closer to him because it allows her a better angle to observe their lack of pursuit. "What would they tell the police?" she asks. "That a man and a woman held up a man who, it turns out, isn't in fact palace security? That they detained him, shot him, and now he's confessing his plan and cursing his soon-to-be ex-wife?"  
  
A faint smile as she straightens, looking out over the Viennese skyline. The night is warm and heavy with the scents of the city. She smiles faintly and shrugs, the violin case over her shoulder shifting with her movement. "Play the mysterious hero for once, Mr. Holmes."

 

"Hero?" Sherlock asks, raising his eyebrows. He's not a hero, he never has been. The idea of playing one seems as silly as the Woman playing the submissive wife back in Canada. It's a part that can be feigned but never truly embraced.

 

The faint smile grows, and she steps away from the edge of the fire escape to pry at the fifth floor window. "Easy enough, I'd say. The bystanders will write it themselves. All you have to do is not show up to contradict them."

 

But he does want to contradict them. After all, here he is Sherlock Holmes, the man who is not a hero. But she's right, of course. There's a line he shouldn't cross in order to keep them both safe.  
  
"Then it appears we are both dressed up with no where in particular to be," he says. He leans over and pulls open the window to the hotel.  
  
"Dinner?"

 

"Are you so certain I have nowhere in particular to be?" she asks lightly. She doesn't, not tonight, not in Vienna where they are Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes again. She ducks past him and into the hotel corridor, glancing past the corner to see if anyone else is in the hall.  
  
"And how long ago was it that I was the one suggesting dinner?"

 

"Too long ago," Sherlock replies. His tone could almost be described as flirtatious. Almost, considering it _is_ Sherlock Holmes. "Though I, for one, am not even remotely hungry."

 

"You never are," she teases, a smile in her voice. Her evening gown's hem catches beneath her feet now that she is no longer in heels, and she picks up the skirt just enough to walk unimpeded.  
  
She rounds the corner, trusting him to follow, and almost immediately stops short, her lips twitching into a smirk as she regards the scene in front of her.  
  
"Well, this is unexpected."

 

Sherlock follows, tilting his head at the scene before them. A man has a woman pressed up against the wall, his hand up her skirt, mouth on her neck. He is somewhat intoxicated but very excited. She is deeply disinterested but faking it. More importantly, Sherlock recognizes her. Long, dark hair, long eyelashes, olive skin. Blackberry in her free hand.  
  
She called herself Anthea when she met John, but that is not her name.  
  
"Interesting."

 

She glances up at him, and sees the recognition in his eyes. She is certain he doesn't recognize the man in question, the amorous, intoxicated idiot with the normally repressed experimental streak. But she recognizes him, having caught him hovering around her hotel the last time she had been in Vienna.  
  
The police officer with a penchant for seeing ghosts.  
  
She grabs Sherlock's hand and ducks back around the corner. "Friend of yours?" she asks. A pause, and a clarification. "The woman."

 

"Not of mine, no," he says. "One of my dear brother's associates. Sent here by him, if I'm not mistaken."

 

She arches an eyebrow at that, and nods back to the amorous couple, well amorous man and bored woman feigning interest. She keeps her voice low. "He's better than I expected, or lucky. She's with the police officer who was particularly good at seeing ghosts in Vienna."

 

"I certainly hope you're referencing Mycroft," he says, raising an eyebrow. "And luck doesn't counter into this. She's his favorite of the moment. He only sends her on tasks he knows are viable. But what could he possibly be looking for from your police officer?"  
  
He nods to the Woman. "How did you know him?"

 

There are times to keep her secrets, but the prospect of working against Mycroft Holmes is not one of those times. Though, that didn't mean she had to make it _easy_ for him.  
  
"Can't put it together?" she murmurs, leaning in close. "He was investigating the forged works Sibyl sold. I happened to have known the clients who bought said artwork." The implication there was obvious, that she had some hand in their buying said forgeries.  
  
"He thought I looked familiar."

 

"And how would he recognize you?" he asks, looking at the corner as though it might explain something he's missing. "Not a client, not the type, though you'd easily know what he likes."

 

"His brother was a prominent novelist. His marriage ended badly."  
  
She gives him a sidelong look as she contemplates Mycroft's spy and the police officer. "Should we take another route, or does your brother need a bit of frustration in his life?"

 

"Ah, yes, I did hear something about this," Sherlock says, smirking. "I imagine both parties enjoyed the ending of their marriage, however."  
  
He looks back at the Woman. He imagines he doesn't need to tell her that his brother _always_ needs more frustration in his life.  
  
"The question is, just how difficult should we be for him?"

 

Her eyes practically gleam at his question, and her lips curve into a wicked smile that he no doubt found familiar. "Surely you didn't need to ask _that_ ," she purrs, reaching up to pull him to her by the front of his shirt as she takes a step backwards, towards where Mycroft's spy and the policemen remain, her bored him aroused.  
  
There is no doubt in her mind that Mycroft's woman will report back exactly what she sees, and Irene intends on making it as distasteful to the elder Holmes as possible.  
  
The fact that she thoroughly enjoys kissing Sherlock Holmes is almost irrelevant to the equation.

 

He leans in, pressing his mouth to hers quickly and roughly, enough to pull some of her lipstick onto his mouth as they move into view of Mycroft's woman and the policeman.  
  
"The train to Stockholm leaves at 11," he says to her, just loud enough for them to hear. "I think that leaves us plenty of time tonight."

 

That provokes another low purr of approval from her, and Irene does not have to bother turning to hear the sharp intake of breath, the shocked gasp from the officer, suddenly surprised. She imagines Mycroft's spy feigns embarrassment at being caught, hiding relief.   
  
"Don't think I'll be done with you by then," she cautions him playfully, feeling the weight of the handguns in his pockets as she tugs him to her. The gesture allows her a momentary glimpse of the woman's face, the light of recognition dawning. Good. "But I suppose I can continue on the train."

 

"Mmhmm," Sherlock says. "I know the Orient Express has rather comfortable beds."  
  
He's not being subtle. Mycroft's woman may be his favorite, but she can be intensely dense at times.  
  
As it is, having the Woman pulling him towards her is wonderful. That, coupled with the knowledge that they're using this interaction to ruin Mycroft's weekend makes things even more fantastic.  
  
He presses his mouth to her jaw and raises a hand to brush her breast.

 

She leans into the touch of his mouth against her jaw, the sensation at once familiar and fascinating. It allows Mycroft's spy a clearer look at her face, and Irene a clearer look at the woman's expression through half-lidded eyes. The woman clutches her phone, and Irene wonders briefly if she was considering taking a photograph, for proof, and she purrs with pleasure at the thought, at the sensation of Sherlock's hand against her breast. The motion tugs the bodice of the fitted evening gown lower, and Irene opens her eyes enough to meet the police officer and Mycroft's woman's gazes.  
  
It is a dangerous play, of course, telling Mycroft Holmes what their plans are, but no doubt his assistant would relay the encounter, and Mycroft would realize they knew exactly who she was. Which meant he'd expect Stockholm to be a bluff, and watch for every other possibility.  
  
She laughs, pleased, and her hand slips into Sherlock's hair, pale fingers tightening in dark curls, as she guides his mouth lower, along the curve of her breast. The sensation of his breath against her skin is electricity down her spine, and her voice is breathless as she answers, pulling him with her, away from the two, down the hallway, "Pity that I don't plan on letting you get _comfortable_."

 

She's more sensitive across her breasts than normal. This is a fact that he feels like stating, but doesn't. He wonders if it is in regards to her menstrual cycle, but again, decides not to ask. These are things he is aware make people uncomfortable, and he has no desire to make the Woman uncomfortable. He's almost entirely certain that she, John, and Mrs. Hudson are the only people on the planet he doesn't try to make uncomfortable on a daily basis.  
  
The Stockholm play is dangerous. It's a specific place. a place that they are intending to go. Sherlock knows his brother. He will try to decide if it is a bluff, or a double bluff, or some sort of triple bluff. And then he will do what Sherlock expects: He will underestimate the Woman. He will decide it is a bluff, because he would expect her to be less than a triple bluff. Mycroft is, unfortunately, aware of how tightly around the Woman's finger Sherlock has become.  
  
"And what, exactly, do you plan to let me _get_ , Woman?"

 

Out of the corner of her eye, Irene catches sight of motion, a familiar gesture, of a phone raised, pointed, shot. She feels a laugh of fierce pleasure threaten to bubble up, and instead of letting Mycroft's woman know exactly how pleased she is by the fact that the elder Holmes brother's weekend was about to be extraordinarily disturbed, tugs him back to her, to press her mouth to his, to turn that laugh into a kiss at once heated and tinged by that same pleasure.  
  
"Isn't it obvious?" she answers, nipping at his lip, heedless of the state of her lipstick, as she continues making their way down the hotel corridor, their progress slowed by how they are entangling themselves in each other. "Extraordinarily frustrated."

 

"Mhmm," Sherlock mumbles, leaning in to kiss her neck. He'd have her right here, he thinks, if he wasn't perfectly aware those photographs are going directly to his brother and could be used as blackmail material (even if the shock would probably be fantastic).  
  
There's a pop, and suddenly the overhead sprinklers are going off. Sherlock hears a small yelp from the couple near them, the girl worried about her mobile, no doubt.  
  
Odd. No alarm.

 

The spray of tepid water that smelled heavily of rust is an unpleasant surprise, though Irene manages to squelch any yelp of her own. But it is unexpected, and she pulls away from him, despite how obviously pleasant the sensation of his mouth against the sensitive nerves of her throat is.  
  
She arches an eyebrow at him, her hand at his wrist, and asks, "Not your doing?"

 

"Obviously," he says, turning his head to look down the corridor. There's no point at looking up, at the sprinklers, they aren't what's causing this. Mycroft's woman looks distraught. Now, he thinks, might be the right time to escape.  
  
Perhaps that was the plan for someone else.  
  
He reaches down and curls his fingers around the Woman's hand.  
  
"Shall we?"

 

She twines her fingers with his as his hand closes around hers, an almost automatic, almost unconscious gesture, and offers him a smile that is vicious and victorious despite the smudged lipstick.  
  
"To dinner?" she asks with a backward but careless look at Mycroft's spy before heading down the hall.

 

He notices the look, and can only hope that Mycroft's woman takes it as ignorance of who she is, rather than observation. Hope. He never hopes for things, he only knows or deduces them. However, with the Woman, much is left to chance. Much is tossed up into the air and there's only the _hope_ it will fall where he prefers it.  
  
"I'm grateful it was her and not Mycroft himself," he says once they get to a stairwell. The lifts are blinking, out of order as the water falls. "He'd have seen through that immediately."

 

Her evening gown is ruined by the falling water, but given that she had little intention of _keeping_ it, she supposes it matters little. She shrugs, keeping the violin case taken from the symphony's things on her shoulder, and begins taking the stairs.  
  
No doubt they were evacuating. It'd be easy to slip in with the crowd.  
  
"Which?" she asks, smirking. "Stockholm or that I would have had you in that corridor?"

 

"Though I imagine both were completely true, the intentions behind admitting them," he says. He puts a hand to the small of her back to keep her close. Intimate touches would make others assume they were simply leaving their bedroom.  
  
"Rather convenient an evacuation time," he says. And he's aware that neither of them planned it. Coincidences are dull and can't possibly be part of this situation right now.  
  
"Who would be willing to help us?" If it was help.

 

His hand at the small of her back is warm against the wet, cooling fabric, and it keeps the smoldering tension that had begun to build at the base of Irene's spine during their deception in the corridor from dissipating. She frowns, considering the question, and two candidates come to mind.   
  
One she discards immediately. While Irene expected she could count on Sibyl Vane's discretion as well as her interest, she knew full well the other woman would not have been able to pick her out of the crowd of the ballroom, not yet, at least. The other was the boy whose weapon currently rested in Sherlock's pocket. That was more likely, assuming he'd managed to slip the police presence that had by now no doubt entered the ballroom.  
  
"I can think of two possibilities," she murmurs, slowing her steps to lean into his touch, as if their hurry was the same as that of the others starting to trickle into the stairwell. "Unless _you've_ made new friends."

 

"You're forgetting one," Sherlock says, turning his head to look at the Woman as they start down the stairs. "And I think he's far more likely than anyone we've met in this city tonight."

 

She meets his eye, and gives him a challenging look.  
  
"What makes you think he isn't one of the two I was considering?"

 

"I know he wasn't," Sherlock replies.

 

An older man, his hair silvered around the temples, stumbles down the stairs while a young woman, ostensibly young enough to be a caring daughter, but who was obvious to Irene's eyes to be an escort indulging an older man's desire to still be seen as relevant and desirable, helps him along. Irene ducks around them, and shoots him another look, irritation in her eyes softened by the touch of a smirk on her lips.  
  
"An inopportune time to be showing off," she reminds him.

 

"It's what we do, Woman," he says. "Both of us."  
  
He leads her gently, watching over his shoulder for the assassin they left in Canada. He doesn't think that the man bears the Woman ill will, but he certainly won't fancy Sherlock at all.

 

"I wouldn't dream of it otherwise. But it _would_ make our escape more noticeable if I decided to have you right here in the stairwell," she answers quietly.   
  
He is watching over his shoulder, and she keeps her gaze forward, watching the slow flood of guests, of security. No one gives them a second look, until a child with long dark hair bumps against Irene's leg, glances back at her, and disappears in front into the evacuating crowd.  
  
She frowns. The hotel patrons evacuating were an older set, wealthy, mostly European, none of them sporting the concern and continued exhaustion parents of young children seemed to wear. More importantly, though, none of them seemed _concerned_ for a child, looking around for one in an unexpected evacuation.  
  
It is a puzzle, and she knows the answer is within reach, but there is a last flight of stairs before they are to the exit and free to slip back into the city.

 

Sherlock doesn't see anyone in the high vantage points he would expect Moran to be hiding. He remembers Moran's injuries, his wounded pride, and wonders if perhaps he was being rash in his initial decision that Moran had to be their protector.

They were playing observation games back in the ballroom. Wouldn't they have noticed someone above head height?

"Perhaps you were right in your initial thought of Miss Vane," Sherlock says, not bothering to explain how he worked out her theory.

 

She shouldn't be surprised that he guesses Sibyl. She isn't. Sibyl Vane is the one person he is certain she knows in Vienna, which makes her an obvious choice, for a guess.

An obvious choice for a guess, but that didn't make the fact that he chooses it less annoying. "Rather impressive, except for the fact that Miss Vane has absolutely no idea I'm in Vienna," she answers smugly. Not yet, at least.

Irene's eyes continue scanning the crowd below them, but she does not catch a glimpse of the child again, though the brief glimpse of the girl's features is enough for her to recall her face.

 

"She was paying attention during the incident with the gun," he says. "Probability's around 43% that she'd have recognized your voice or figure."  
  
It's not a high enough percent to be deducible, of course. He hates being uncertain. Part of him wants to stop everyone leaving, to check each individual person for a clue. Granted, that would ruin the entire point of starting the sprinklers but keeping the alarms off.

 

"43% is hardly more than a guess, Mr. Holmes," she tells him with a smile.  
  
The moment her feet are no longer on the stairs, Irene sweeps her gaze over the crowd again. Her voice is low as she murmurs, "Do you _observe_ anyone in this crowd that look like they would have a child in tow, eight or nine years old, small for her age?"

 

His eyebrows go up at the question, and he immediately begins scanning the crowd. Child. Eight or nine. Have they encountered children? Why would she ask this?  
  
"No," he says. "Too high-end, too many vacationing couples. Six have left their children with parents, two with friends. No families. They'd be down the street, the more family-oriented hotel."  
  
She must have seen a child. He looks around.  
  
"Where?"

 

"I thought not."   
  
She nods in agreement. She expected he wouldn't, that he had not seen something she'd missed, but it seemed safest to be certain. Rather than stopping, Irene tightens her grip on his hand and begins weaving through the gathering guests and towards the street.  
  
"It doesn't matter. As you said, this is the opportune time to make our escape."

 

The tightness of her grip causes him to pause mentally, although he moves quickly alongside her. Child. Worrisome. Who? Someone he deleted? Would he have to sift through his mental log of children? Or, perhaps, just this moment to see what he missed.

"A friend of yours?" he asks, tilting his head as he moves with her.

 

She has a guess. That it was the same child they'd seen in San Salvador, the girl he'd insisted on saving in Hong Kong when she'd been perfectly content to simply give the girl a key to her own salvation.  
  
It makes her suspect Moran is close, or that the girl has taken it upon herself to follow. Given the fact that even the most incompetent government officials raised their eyebrows at unaccompanied, jet-setting children, she leans towards the former. Irene's lips thin, and another task adds itself to her mental list of things to accomplish on the train to Stockholm.  
  
"A mutual friend, I think," she answers. "But one easily outdistanced."


	8. Patience and Gaslit Courtyards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An old acquaintance from Hong Kong promises Irene Adler a new lead, while at the same time she finds herself attempting to fulfill Sherlock Holmes' promise, to raise _two_ corpses back from the dead by discrediting Jim Moriarty...

A mutual friend. A child. No, Sherlock knows precisely who she is referring to.

"And why would she be here?" he questions aloud, eyes going up to places where Moran might hide.

 

"To have you gaping upward as an easy target," she remarks dryly, though there is little actual concern in her voice for that possibility. She is certain she's made abundantly clear to Moran what would happen to him if he decided to take things into his own hands.  
  
"She clearly doesn't want to keep us here."

 

"She's good, if she's the one who did this," he says. "No alarm, but enough of a diversion to get us away."

Unless Moran warps her terribly, he imagines she'll grow up and become quite a formidable woman. Not unlike the Woman herself.

 

She gives him a brief, but utterly genuine, smile over her shoulder at that.  
  
"Why do you think I was content to let her run wild in Hong Kong with nothing more than a diamond in her pocket?"

 

"Perhaps I'll let you deal with children from here on out," he says.

 

That brief smile turns to a look of distaste at the very idea, and Irene turns down a side street, heading back to their hotel. There were still several hours until their train, and the damp evening gown was already clinging unpleasantly to her skin.  
  
"How fortunate that the Express to Stockholm restricts the number of children allowed on board."

 

A shame. The genuine nature of the smile was something to be treasured. But that is not their relationship, they do not treasure things, they simply experience them and move forward. It can't be healthy, he thinks. But what about their relationship really is?  
  
He pulls off his suit jacket and places it over her shoulders.  
  
"Yes. After the screaming child on the way to Las Vegas, I've had enough of children for quite some time."

 

There is a moment of surprise when he drapes his suit jacket over her shoulders, a half-second of sudden tension, a heartbeat of frozen reaction, and relaxation again as she pulls it more securely over her shoulders. The weight of the guns in the suit jacket's pockets swing against her hips, and she eases the strap of the violin case off her shoulder and hands it to him with a ghost of a smirk flirting at the corner of her mouth.  
  
"You make a far more believable second violin than I do."

 

He raises an eyebrow as if to say: _Second_ violin? All the same, he accepts the case, and what it means for them. A disguise. Something to keep them safe. Is that what the girl was doing? Keeping them safe? A repayment?  
  
"Is she working on her own, or with Moran?" he asks, not bothering to explain his train of thought.

 

The corner of her mouth twitches with that ghost of a smile at his look as if to say: _Precisely_. There is some small comfort in that fact, in the knowledge, that even with his coat around her shoulders, a gesture that had not been the beginning of a disguise until she offered him the violin, that they are still themselves. That despite the blips of sentiment, the moments of intimacy, that they still find themselves best in unspoken challenges, in words exchanged in a glance.  
  
She considers the question, the smirk at her lips fading to thoughtfulness. "She was in Nassau before Moran was in San Salvador," she says carefully, glancing over. "Unless you believe in coincidences."

 

"Coincidences make things easy and therefore dull," Sherlock replies easily. "I'm especially interested in learning how she's doing so much international travel on her own."  
  
He looks to the street as they walk on, perhaps for a cab. Nothing is on the road due to the incident next door, but he's not supposed to know that.

 

"Well that's obvious, isn't it?" she teases, the smirk back on her lips as a pedestrian eyes them, his eyes moving down to her evening gown and lack of shoes. She smiles, a touch too wide, and sways away from Sherlock. The man watching looks up, and she can see him relax, can see his revelation in his eyes. _Disheveled, swaying, inebriated._  
  
Never mind that there was no blush on her cheeks, no telltale signs of actual alcohol consumption besides the falsely swaying steps. It's enough to deflect attention.  
  
"I'm more interested in knowing whether her erstwhile guardian still thinks he's picking their destinations."

 

"I imagine so," Sherlock replies with a slight smile. "Occasionally, I even think that I'm picking our destinations, too."  
  
Her act of inebriation is brilliant. Not too exaggerated, not _fake_ , but just a level of drunken happiness that makes others simply assume she's happy and well, not that she's in any level of danger.

 

She laughs easily in response. The passersby no longer see an oddly disheveled woman without shoes, next to the oddly tieless suited man, but a pair, clearly a musician for one of the endless bands that played the Viennese balls, he and his companion both mussed from the festivities. No doubt there was a story behind the lack of shoes, and some would unconsciously look on their way home, expecting to see a tie hanging from a lamppost, perhaps, or a pair of heels abandoned in a fountain.  
  
"Comparing yourself to Moran?" she asks, swaying towards him. "You do realize the fundamental difference is you have a slim chance of actually choosing."

 

He actually lets out a little laugh at that, which both suits the situation they're allowing others to see, and also his mood. He wonders if there are others in her life that are allowed that choice, and decides that the answer is _probably not._  
  
A police vehicle moves past them, and he sees one of the guests walk past, completely oblivious to the two of them. After all, they were serious and deadly back in the ballroom, now they appear carefree and part of the crowd. He thinks about the violin. He should play for her one last time before they leave this place. He can't imagine there will be another opportunity any time soon.  
  
"And to where, exactly, are you leading us this time?"

 

Their hotel is steps away, and Irene smirks in response to the question. There is enough time for a stray moment of intimacy or two before the train. For music or a stolen touch before she has to leave a note with the violin to ensure its return to the symphony and its conductor.  
  
Before their next disguise, before they are one step closer to Moscow.  
  
"Haven't you figured it out already?"

 

Obviously not, but he considers her, and their walk, and where they're going. Not to the hotel, that's too obvious, too much of an end to a night that should last as long as they want it.  
  
"Clearly not prepared ahead of time," he says. "Spur of the moment answers are always more difficult to deduce."

 

"Even with the amount of time you've had to observe the last few months," she asks. Instead of heading for the hotel, she slips down one of the cobblestone alleys that branch off the main street, and calls over her shoulder,  
  
"Now I _am_ flattered."

 

"Don't be," he calls ahead.  
  
She should be, really. He doesn't often find himself continually fooled. Even people he initially found interesting become predictable and dull, like Sally Donovan. The Woman, however, has maintained herself, and therefore kept his interest.  
  
He follows her without a second thought. After all, where else would he want to go?

 

She smiles, and continues down the alley. It is clean, well maintained, and the buildings on either side rear up, history and ivy clinging to their bricks. Ahead, there is a back entrance to the hotel, but it isn't what draws her down this way. The alley opens up into a courtyard, small and picturesque, dimly lit by moonlight and a few gas lamps, for looks rather than function given the anemic light they throw out. The buildings muffle the sound of the traffic and the city, and the only sound within is the trickle of water in the fountain.  
  
She stops at the fountain, and slips her hand into the suit jacket's pocket, pulling out the weapon Sherlock had liberated from the Tunisian man. "It wouldn't take much to discredit Kitty Riley," she says, examining the gun in the dim light. "The woman who wrote the article about Richard Brook."

 

The courtyard is lovely, but even more so is the Woman, light from the fountain illuminating her face, her hand holding the weapon from his coat. Were he the sort to believe in something as absurd as "breathtaking", he'd believe she was exactly that, in that moment.  
  
"Discrediting her isn't the difficult part," he says. "It's proving he never existed at all. My word means absolutely nothing in the wake of a scandal. Not simply because I've committed suicide."

 

"I know." She slides the magazine out of the weapon, empties it of bullets, and slips the emptied magazine back into the gun. The bullets have a faint bronze glow to them in the low light, and she flicks one into the fountain.   
  
"I know. But if she were discredited first, they would be far more willing to believe the story of a woman back from the dead." She looks over at her shoulder at him, her expression stern. "Don't think I've forgotten how you're still trying to get your way."  
  
Though her tone suggests she hardly minds that.

 

"Don't forget the one in the chamber," he says, both about the gun she holds and what she's propositioning.   
  
"The dishonesty of her paper is well known, but she herself is so unknown that her inaccuracies are considered irrelevant. This particular story would need to be specifically targeted.

 

"Leave the mystery you want them to solve and they won't look any further," she says, not bothering to take the last bullet out of the chamber. It is, after all, relevant to so many things they are proposing.   
  
Another bullet in the fountain, the gun back in the suit coat's pocket.  
  
She looks up at the patch of sky visible above them, and considers all that would be necessary to do as he proposed. To reveal Richard Brook as a fabrication, to bring Irene Adler back from the dead, to reveal the depths of Moriarty's threats, to bring Sherlock Holmes back from the dead. All of it necessary, one step at a time.  
  
"Play for me?" It isn't what she had meant to say.

 

He starts somewhat at her request. He has only played for her once, in a quiet, romantic status. This is different. This is them, thinking, in a place where they aren't completely safe. Perhaps she is like his? Perhaps she simply wants to think to the sound of his music? It is, again, difficult to tell with her.  
  
He steps over to where she sits and puts down the violin. It is an expensive piece, tuned impeccably. He traces his finger across the bow before he picks it up.  
  
"Preference of song?" he asks, before he begins to play once of his own pieces. A piece with music that goes up and down in pulses, like a heartbeat.

 

He plays, and it is oddly peaceful in this place, a secluded courtyard, a pocket of anonymity in the middle of Vienna. She doesn't answer with a preference, instead smiling faintly as he chooses, as the notes twine with the splash of the fountain and soaks into the stones of the courtyard.  
  
The thoughts come quicker in the wake of his playing, and she arranges the remaining bullets on the edge of the fountain. One for Moran and the remnants of Moriarty's network. One for herself. One for him. One for Kitty Riley. One for the yet-unknown pawn she would need to reveal herself. She moves them like chess pieces in counterpoint to his playing.  
  
Eventually, she picks up one of the bullets, the one she's mentally assigned to Kitty Riley, and tells him, "I'll need Jim's resources."  
  
Not a surprise, given she's already planned on taking them.

 

"You're not planning on killing Kitty Riley," he says. It isn't a question or an admonishment, it's simply fact. There is no point in killing Kitty. It is a waste of resources, and it would be downright boring. The Woman is nothing if not _not boring_.  
  
He enjoys watching her move the pieces. Chess is something he is excellent at, but has found little interest in. He imagines she must enjoy it more, enjoy the manipulation, the watching as a plan falls into place. Sherlock, conversely, tired of chess the moment he saw its outcome. This is how they are different, but it doesn't make watching her any less fascinating.  
  
He continues to play.

 

"She isn't worth the trouble," she agrees. Murder was an inelegant solution, in this case. A tug at her lips as she flicks the bullet in her hand into the fountain. Discrediting Kitty Riley was simple, something that could be set in motion in a few hours, with Sibyl and the young criminal. With the one person who could defend Richard Brook discredited, it would make things much simpler.  
  
She sets one bullet aside, the one assigned to Sherlock. The other three she scoops up. She had enough now to slip a properly motivated investigative journalist the information to dig up Jim Moriarty's existence. And once she had Jim's network the journalist's proof would be even easier to come by. And so Irene Adler would return from the dead, with a proper story about being on the run from Jim Moriarty, killer.  
  
"They'll turn it into something idiotically romantic, you realize," she says, leaving the single solitary bullet sitting on the fountain's edge, the other three slipped back into the suit coat's pocket. She rises to her feet again. "Irene Adler's faked death, assisted by the consulting detective."

 

He changes the tune, stringing together something long and dramatic in between the light, feminine high notes. He pauses, moving the violin from his chin to speak.  
  
"They do little else when it comes to me. John Watson's romantic ways of writing. He made my case with you seem like a love story."  
  
He puts the violin back under his chin and begins anew.

 

A laugh, and she crosses the courtyard to deposit the gun with its single bullet in the chamber in a bin. The implications of a discarded gun with a single bullet are obvious, and no doubt a cause for relief rather than suspicion.   
  
"And that can't be further from the truth." A touch of wry humour in that. They are utterly themselves, and narratives such as love stories were far too simplistic for them. "Play the piece from Montreal."  
  
She has a plan. She doesn't need the music to help her think. But she wants to hear it again nonetheless.

 

"Far closer to a war than a love story," he agrees. He begins to play the piece, watching her face, memorizing her reactions.  
  
All's fair in both love and war. It's a saying he's heard many times and never truly understood. Even now, even with the Woman there, right in front of him, playing for her like a child instructed, he doesn't understand.  
  
What he does understand is that she has a plan. A plan that he will thoroughly enjoy carrying out with her.

 

Something in her expression softens at the sound of the now-familiar notes and she steps back towards him, as she watches him play in the dimly lit courtyard. He's watching her, and she is watching him, memorizing this moment, the feel of the night-chilled cobblestone beneath her feet, the sound of the violin, of the soaring plaintive notes he is drawing from the strings. She knows that this is one of the moments she will not forget, that will always make Vienna a place she remembers fondly.  
  
There are far too many of those, now.  
  
"War implies an eventual, singular winner," she finally says, offering him a hand. "Or are you conceding already, Mr. Holmes?"

 

He finishes the melody just as she extends her hand. He lowers the violin and reaches out, taking her hand with his. Touches, simple and intimate, are what changed the war back when they first met. Now, they were part of their lives, part of how they knew each other.  
  
"I never concede," he says, taking a step towards her. "Will you?"

 

His hand is a now-familiar weight in hers, a now-familiar warmth twined with her fingers, and she takes a matching step towards him in response. Because they are Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, and they orbited each other, moved not as one but always in proximity, one never too far ahead, or too close.  
  
"Never," she confirms.

 

"Then, once again, we are at an impasse."   
  
He leans down and presses his mouth to hers, gently at first. More often than not, he finds that kissing the Woman is the only option, as all other options are simply unthinkable.

 

She would never admit to being surprised by him; their mutual pride would not allow it. But she is, constantly, surprised when he initiates these small gestures, when he presses his mouth to hers without mutual provocation, when his hand finds hers without the need to keep a disguise.  
  
She returns the kiss in kind, her response as measured as the steps of the minuet just hours ago. She wants to know where he will lead, if given the opportunity.  
  
Still, she murmurs against his mouth, "There will always be another piece of the puzzle with you."  
  
It's a compliment.

 

"And yours is one that can never quite be solved," he admits. To admit defeat in this is as close to vulnerability as he can get, and might even be considered a declaration of love or devotion. Not that he'd admit it, of course.  
  
The holiday can't last forever. Together they'll work out a way to make this---whatever it is---between them continue on for as long as they can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends another installment of _Death Takes A Holiday_! To all of our regular readers: thank you for staying with us, and we hope you're still enjoying the ride. To all of our new readers: Thank you for taking a chance on us, and I hope you'll continue to enjoy it!
> 
> As always, with the end of another DTaH installment, Lyra will be taking a short break before posting the next one. That break should be about 2-3 weeks long, but don't worry, we'll be back soon with _Death Takes A Holiday: Machinations on the Orient Express_.


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